


The Daring Win

by Lomonaaeren



Series: The Daring Win [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Drama, Gen, Politics, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2018-07-15 22:14:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 36
Words: 105,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7240597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The year: 1987. The place: Muggle London. The situation: The Boy-Who-Lived is being treated horribly by his Muggle relatives. A young witch must take him in for the Ministry’s good and his. </p><p>The witch’s name: Dolores Umbridge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Muggle London

**Author's Note:**

> This will be an Umbridge-raises-Harry story. It will be pretty fucked-up because of that. The whole thing is in Dolores’s POV (she would hardly tolerate any others), and will update every Saturday.
> 
> The rating is for violence; please look at other warnings.

Dolores kept her thoughts to herself as she stood behind Bartemius and listened to him speaking to the French Minister’s son. The son had wanted a tour of Muggle London. Bartemius was assigned to give it, and Dolores had come with him to show willing. It was _so_ important that the Department of International Magical Cooperation and the Improper Use of Magic Office could work together.  
  
Of course, it was _also_ important that the next candidate for Head of that Office showed all the proper attitudes. Dolores was beginning to regret the journey. Crouch was not the man he had once been, before he made the mistake of having a son sentenced to Azkaban. And the French Minister’s son…  
  
Dolores shuddered delicately and renewed the spells on the orange with cloves that she was holding to her nose. What sort of person was he if he could _willingly_ want to see how Muggles lived?  
  
Right now, a slack-jawed person, staring around and tilting his head back so that he could fully see the ceiling of the small Muggle shop where they stood. They were under Disillusionment Charms, at least; Dolores had got Crouch to agree to that. The excuse was so that none of the Muggles would notice them behaving uncharacteristically.  
  
The real reason was so obvious that Dolores’s estimate of Crouch had dropped again when she received no acknowledging nod.  
  
With a sigh, Dolores turned to watch the Muggles, although they were simply the same crack-voiced, ugly-faced, improper-clothing-wearing savages that she already knew about. At least she sometimes saw a mother dragging a screaming child out by a sleeve or the scruff of a neck. Dolores nodded. They were inferior in every way, they would never know about the wonders that dwelt in their midst, but at least some of them had an idea of the right fashion to treat a snotty-nosed little boy wailing for a biscuit.  
  
She watched a tall, thin woman snap at a boy trailing behind her in a grey jumper so huge that Dolores couldn’t even see if he had trousers on. Dolores shuddered delicately. From the clothes, the boy was poor.  
  
_He should have made better decisions._  
  
The woman pointed to a container of cabbages that looked almost like the barrels of beetle’s eyes at the last apothecary Dolores had visited. Approvingly, Dolores watched as the little boy began to sort through the cabbages. Was he like a house-elf? She hadn’t known that Muggles were allowed them.  
  
Then she saw the scar, and her approval fell away.  
  
_A lightning bolt! A lightning bolt on his head!_ Dolores craned her neck in the subtle way she’d perfected that meant no one could see where she was looking. But there it was, the same from every angle, as the child gathered up cabbages and two cases of Muggle foods the woman directed him to. This was Harry Potter. Dolores remembered the black flyaway hair very well from pictures.  
  
The _Daily Prophet_ had just run another article on him the other day, in fact, speculating where Harry Potter had disappeared to.  
  
_To be abused by Muggles, apparently,_ thought Dolores, and felt indignation swell inside her. _As if that is a_ proper _fate for a wizarding child!_  
  
At that moment, it was all so clear to her. Harry Potter hadn’t been taken charge of by people who wanted the best for him, people who had the Ministry’s future and the boy’s future—which were intertwined, of course—at heart. He’d been seized on by someone who wanted to teach him about Muggles so he would come into their world a blithering Muggle-lover and they could use him against the Ministry.  
  
Which meant Dumbledore, of course. Dolores wanted to clap her hand to her forehead at her own stupidity, wondering how in the world she had never noticed before.  
  
For now, she could do something about it. She slipped away from Crouch and the French Minister’s son, who were still acting as though fat Muggle women in scarves was the most interesting sight in the world, and walked towards the thin woman and the figurehead she was raising. The boy had just stretched out an arm to grab hold of a bottle of…something. Dolores, after a few moments of incredulous staring, decided it was milk.  
  
_Trust Muggles to keep milk that way,_ she thought, and came close enough to hear the woman say, “Don’t drop anything, boy, or you know what will happen.”  
  
“Yes, Aunt Petunia.”  
  
_No wizard should ever sound like that, defeated and worn-down and so automatic. We are the pinnacle of magic and should rejoice in it._ Dolores came up behind the woman and touched her wand to her throat. Since she was still under the Disillusionment Charm, no other Muggle in the shop noticed anything.  
  
But the boy turned his head sharply when she said, “Do exactly as I tell you, Muggle, and you won’t get hurt.”  
  
From the way the woman froze, the word “Muggle” and maybe even the feel of a wand weren’t unfamiliar to her. That only made Dolores’s wrath more deadly. Then she _did_ know that she was badly mistreating someone superior to her, and she still did it anyway.  
  
She deserved something special. Dolores knew how to do special.  
  
“Wh—who—”  
  
“Someone who saw the way you treated a wizard, and thinks you don’t deserve to be alive,” said Dolores, tightening her hand on her wand. But even as the Muggle’s head bent back and she gave a frightened squeak, Dolores reminded herself she had to hang on to her temper, too. She would simplify her life considerably if she could do that. The Ministry would forgive a lot, but a dead Muggle was hard to erase memories of.  
  
“Wizard?”  
  
The boy was the one who asked that, fiddling with the sleeve of his too-large shirt. Dolores gave him another assessing glance. When he wasn’t looking at the floor, his green eyes were sharp and intelligent, and he even looked straight at her despite the Disillusionment Charm not letting him see her.  
  
Although he wore glasses. Dolores could admire the impressions glasses could give, used the right way, but not the ones he wore. How hideous.  
  
“Yes,” she said. “You are a wizard. Your name is Harry Potter, and you’re famous as the Boy-Who-Lived in our world.”  
  
She had hoped he might show some recognition, but instead, he only stared at her. “I can do _magic_?”  
  
_Oh, dear._ Dolores wondered whether surviving the Killing Curse could cause brain damage. That would be unfortunate. While she could teach the boy his place in their world, it would be much harder to exhibit him to advantage if he drooled or interrupted his betters or didn’t know what a wand was.  
  
“Yes,” she said. “What has your aunt told you? That you’re a Squib, or a Muggle? No such thing.” She laughed, and watched the Muggle’s flinch in delight. “No. You’re most definitely a wizard, Mr. Potter.”  
  
“I don’t know what those words mean.” The boy didn’t dart his eyes around looking for her at least, thank goodness. He seemed to focus steadily on her, and he even moved a little closer so no one else could hear him speaking. “I just know that I—I’m different. They always said I was.”  
  
“But never why?” Dolores smiled. Not brain-damaged, but ignorant. That made her even more certain that it was Dumbledore who had placed him here. Dumbledore thought highly of the value of ignorance. It was the only way he could recruit new Muggle-lovers, if he kept facts from them about what Muggles did to wizards when they found them.  
  
“No.” The boy hesitated for a long moment. “What’s your name?”  
  
“Dolores Umbridge,” Dolores said, and pulled her lips together when the Muggle didn’t flinch at her name. Her contact with the wizarding world must be limited, even if she had the Boy-Who-Lived in her care. “You have a few choices. You can stay here with your family, or you can come with me.”  
  
“I’m coming with you.”  
  
Dolores had been all ready to recite the advantages of such a guardianship, but that made her blink. Why would the boy want to get away from the Muggles so quickly? They must have some kind of blood relation to him, and everyone knew that blood was incredibly important to most Muggle-lovers. That was the way Mudbloods justified staying close to their parents and spreading around secrets, after all.  
  
But the boy turned his head and looked at the thin woman, and Dolores saw the answer. It was an answer she had seen in the mirror before, when she locked herself in the bathroom and miserably contemplated why she had been born to a wizard father and a _Muggle_ mother.  
  
Many on Dumbledore’s side valued family. But this boy might value power more.  
  
“Of course you are,” said Dolores, and managed to make her voice soft by thinking of the boy as a kitten. He had messy hair sort of like a newborn kitten’s head-fur, and his eyes were a brilliant green. That made it easier. “Come along, Mr. Potter.”  
  
She took his hand, and cast a Disillusionment Charm on him when he hesitated. Then the two of them walked away from the Muggle shop, and left the gaping woman and Crouch and the French Minister’s son behind them.  
  
Dolores’s mind was working rapidly as she thought about that. It wouldn’t improve relationships between Crouch’s office and her own. And she sometimes had hopes of Crouch. She knew he had been married once before, and to a woman who was incredibly different from her. But wouldn’t that make him only all the _more_ likely to turn to a woman who could offer him some peace and rest from work by taking the work on her own shoulders?  
  
Now, she didn’t have to think about that. Now, she could look at the boy trotting next to her, not full of trust for her but full of hatred for what he was leaving behind, and smile.  
  
She didn’t have to find a powerful husband now. Not if she could get confirmed as Harry Potter’s guardian, and have him tell the Muggle-lovers of the world what his _loving_ relatives had been doing to him.  
  
She had her own path to tread.


	2. The Ministry

Dolores had worked enough with people in different Departments of the Ministry down the years to know exactly how to handle a swift adoption. There were people who owed her favors, and only a few who knew her secrets.  
  
Dolores was prepared to work with both.  
  
As they walked towards the Ministry’s entrance, she gave the boy a swift education in exactly why he was so important.  
  
“Your parents were fighting a Dark wizard called You-Know-Who.” The child gave her a glance full of curiosity, which Dolores ignored. She would give the boy books later. She would not speak a name aloud that was dead and gone. “He broke into the house where they were staying and killed them. Then he tried to kill you.”  
  
She turned Potter to face her. He stood tamely enough, which might be the one praiseworthy legacy his Muggle upbringing had left him. Dolores touched his scar. “This is the only remnant of that curse.”  
  
“People think that makes me special?”  
  
Dolores nodded. She didn’t like children, and she had to admire the boy’s quickness in seeking out the reason she would want to adopt him. She was sure he knew that she didn’t like children. Most brats knew instinctively. “It is. The curse that You-Know-Who used on you is one that most of the time, no one can survive. The Killing Curse. It always slays instantly.” She looked down into Potter’s eyes. They were as bright as legend said, as bright as a cat’s. “Except with you.”  
  
Potter nibbled his lip for a moment. It was a loathsome habit that Dolores would work on correcting later. “But no one knows why I did it?”  
  
Dolores relaxed. An intelligent boy would be easier to be around. “Exactly. Or _how_ , which is more to the point. You’re known as the Boy-Who-Lived in our world. The world you should always have lived in.” Time to expose him to one more home truth before she took him into the Ministry. Well, perhaps two. “First, you aren’t to think that you can give yourself airs with me. I don’t know yet if you’re magically powerful or if you survived the Killing Curse for another reason.”  
  
Personally, Dolores had always thought the seemingly perfect Potters had performed Dark rituals to protect their child. People did always get so sickeningly sentimental about their brats. But it wasn’t politically expedient to besmirch the Potters’ names, and so she had never tried.   
  
“Yes, madam,” Potter whispered, voice so low that Dolores had trouble making it out.  
  
Elocution lessons could also come later. “Second,” Dolores said, and reached out to put her wand beneath the boy’s chin so he would look up at her, “someone placed you with your Muggle relatives instead of raising you in the wizarding world the way they should have. I have my suspicions about that, and I’ll try to get revenge on that person for you. But until I know for sure, you can’t mention anything about it.”  
  
“Do you know who they are?” Potter’s eyes were so wide, and believing. That pleased Dolores. People often thought she was lying even when she wasn’t.  
  
“I have my _suspicions_ ,” she repeated, and Potter looked abashed. “But I can’t tell you right now, or you might look out of place if we meet that person.” She looked towards the Ministry entrance; she would have liked to Floo in, but on the other hand, presentation was important. “Sometimes he visits the Ministry.”  
  
“I understand.”  
  
And Potter sounded as if he did, was the wonder! Dolores thought, guiding him towards the Ministry entrance again. She decided that perhaps the Muggles had taught him his place. Well, not his real place, of course; he couldn’t have any while he lived with Muggles and had to be their servant. But something like it, the way a child should act around adults. He seemed much more mature and understanding than Dolores had been afraid of.  
  
Yes, she thought she could live with Harry Potter.  
  
*  
  
 _Timing is everything_.  
  
Her father used to say that to her when he got drunk, which was the only time he ever tried to give her advice. But he meant it about the sweeps of a broom, the only thing he knew, and he would go on, sobbing, to tell her all about some office he failed to clean properly years ago and how guilty he felt about it.  
  
It had taken a lot of time and trouble for Dolores to find the useful advice in among the useless things. And longer for her to be sure that no trace of guilt would ever trouble her.  
  
She marched into the Atrium with her head held high and her hand on Potter’s shoulder. She’d told him to look around but not gape. And it seemed Potter was having a hard time holding his jaw shut as he stared at the sparkling fountain and the wizards and witches hurrying in and out of fireplaces.  
  
Well. He _should_ stare. The Ministry was the most important institution in their world, and Dolores didn’t think the general population had as much awe of it as they should.  
  
But she also cast a small spell, the opposite of a Notice-Me-Not Charm, that drew their attention. And either more people than she’d thought would recognized the shape of the Potter hair and face, or the scar stood out as the most noticeable thing on Potter, because quiet spread around them even before someone shouted out the truth.  
  
“Blimey, it’s Harry Potter!”  
  
A circle of admirers surrounded them immediately. Dolores made sure to keep herself in between most of the gabbling adults and the overwhelmed child. “Yes, he’s Harry Potter,” she said over and over. “I found him living with Muggles who mistreated him. Disgraceful. Yes, the scar is real, but you can’t touch it. Do you think he’s a _thing_ to be pawed?”  
  
She saw Potter watching her with a new emotion in his eyes. It might be gratitude. Dolores hadn’t seen enough of that in the past to be sure of it.  
  
“We must see the Minister at once, of course,” said Dolores, passing a hand across her forehead and trying her best to look overworked. Of course, not too much so, because someone might think Harry Potter should be with someone less busy if they took it _too_ seriously. “This is a matter for the Minister!”  
  
And of course once she had said that, then everyone else saw it, too. Dolores swept into the lift with her head proudly held back and her hand on Potter’s shoulder, and she wondered again at the power of names. Hers meant nothing. Minister Bagnold’s meant everything.  
  
And perhaps Dolores Umbridge’s would come to mean something, too, if only as part of the trailing stars surrounding Harry Potter’s.  
  
*  
  
“What’s this, then, Dolores?”  
  
Dolores bowed her head. She was impressed that Minister Bagnold knew exactly who she was. It was good sense to know the rising power players in the Ministry, but once one reached a certain level of power, most people let that go. They expected others to know who _they_ were, instead.  
  
Not that Dolores intended to be like that, but most reports said Minister Bagnold was.  
  
She came around her desk, a tall brown-haired woman who didn’t know the value of keeping a desk between her and any visitors. She studied Potter critically, and then nodded and looked up at Dolores. “So it _is_ him.”  
  
 _Does she think I would have tried to get in here with a fake?_ But when Dolores thought about it, she supposed someone might have tried that tactic. People would come up with any means to grasp at power, including ones that any fool could see were an excuse.  
  
“Yes,” said Potter, after Dolores planted a careful elbow in his ribs. She couldn’t be seen to be coaxing or cueing him too much; that would earn the very suspicion she was trying to avoid. And Potter reached up to flatten his hair and made _such_ a poor job of it that Dolores wanted to roll her eyes. “I’m Harry Potter. Um, Minister,” he added, after Dolores gave him another jab in the ribs.  
  
Minister Bagnold sighed like she was letting go of a lot of responsibility and held out her hand. “So nice to meet you, Mr. Potter. I think I need to thank you personally for what you did for us on that night long ago. You made sure that I wouldn’t lose my office.” She winked at him. “Think about what would have happened if You-Know-Who had gone on fighting longer than he did! I’m sure he had his eye on the Minister’s position.”  
  
Potter gave Dolores a panicked glance. Dolores couldn’t advise him, though. She was at a bit of a loss herself. Since when would the Minister actually _say_ something like that?  
  
 _She’s not fit to be Minister, then,_ Dolores told herself, and pasted a smile on her lips. It didn’t really matter. It just meant Bagnold might be easier to fool.  
  
Potter shook the Minister’s hand, in the end, and mumbled some words that could easily be taken for real ones about how much he admired her and how devoted she was to her duty. Bagnold smiled and took a step back.  
  
“And why is Mr. Potter here with you, Dolores?”   
  
Dolores had given an abbreviated version of the story in the Atrium, because she knew she could get away with it. But this would need something more. Luckily, she had never heard rumors that Bagnold was a Legilimens, the way stories said Dumbledore was. She leaned in and lowered her voice to the breathy whisper that made her sound softest.  
  
“I was in a Muggle shop with Mr. Crouch and the French Minister’s son, to show him something of Muggle life.” From Minister Bagnold’s sympathetic grimace, she knew exactly what kind of chore Dolores had been saddled with. “I saw Mr. Potter with a woman I can only conclude was his Muggle aunt.”  
  
Bagnold glanced at Potter. In spite of what must have been an enormous temptation to stare at his trainers, he managed to glance up and nod.  
  
“My Aunt Petunia, Minister.” His voice whispered and scraped. Dolores wondered if there was any truth to the archaic tales about Muggles pouring acid down children’s throats as a form of discipline. If it made them sound like _that_ , though, it was something she would never try.  
  
“Last name?” Bagnold had moved back to a pile of paper on her desk and was leafing through it.   
  
“Potter—I mean, oh, my aunt?” Potter corrected himself hastily as Dolores jabbed him again. “Dursley, Minister.”  
  
“As I thought.” Bagnold held something up and squinted at it, then turned around, shaking her head. “I have Lily and James Potter’s wills here. There’s a list of people they trusted, in case the Fidelius was broken and someone had to have charge of raising you, Mr. Potter. The Dursleys aren’t listed. I do wonder how you wound up there.”  
  
She glanced at Dolores, and even though it was probably absent and not meant for her to speak, Dolores did. Rumors spread now, as long as she was careful in the way she phrased the words, could do as much damage to the people she hated as truth. “I think—I mean, it’s probably wrong, Minister, and…” She lowered her eyes and bit her lip anxiously.  
  
“Do go on, Dolores.” Bagnold turned and perched on her desk, sliding a little down it as she watched Dolores intently.  
  
“I think it might have been Headmaster Dumbledore.” In public, Dolores was always careful with titles. “I remember the speech that the _Daily Prophet_ wrote about right after You-Know-Who’s fall. You know, the one where he refused to reveal the wizarding family who had adopted the boy because he said fame wouldn’t be good for a child? Maybe he thought the best way to make sure his fame wouldn’t trouble the boy is for him to grow up completely outside our world. Muggles don’t know who he is, after all.”  
  
Bagnold gave a thin smile. She was a well-known ally of Dumbledore’s, at least most of the time. She had to be, in order to survive the political climate where Dumbledore was the darling of the realm, Dolores thought. But Bagnold gave mostly passive support when she could, and didn’t join Dumbledore’s intense pro-Muggle measures.  
  
 _She’s deciding between the cost of opposing his will and the sweetness of being able to get one over on him._  
  
“Maybe he did think that,” Bagnold finally chose to say, temperately. She was probably already thinking about how she would sound if someone chose to request Dolores’s Pensieve memories in a trial. Dolores didn’t mind that. It made her a lot more tolerable, knowing the Minister was like her.   
  
“Yes, maybe he did,” said Dolores, and smiled at her. She reached out and caressed Potter’s hair, pretending not to notice the way he flinched when her hand rose above his head. That might be useful, in the end, some way of helping control him. For now, she would pretend, as she did with many of her superiors in the Ministry, that she didn’t notice his missteps. “But I think the cure has proven worse than the problem. The poor boy didn’t know what magic was, or who he was.”  
  
She let her voice sink on the last words, pretty sure that Bagnold would be interested in them since she’d wanted to thank Potter personally. From the way Bagnold’s eyes glinted and she shifted her weight, the message had been received.  
  
“Yes, I see what you mean,” Bagnold murmured thoughtfully. She raised her wand, and several spells clicked into place around the room like invisible shutters. Dolores heard the snap and clatter, and was impressed. Some people thought noisy magic meant the person was less powerful, but she had heard spells like that raised around some of the meetings she’d attended, ones meant to reduce the chances of eavesdropping. That Bagnold could cast them at all was the impressive thing, not how silent she could keep them.  
  
“I think you may be the best choice to raise him, for several reasons.”  
  
Dolores blinked. She’d never wanted to let Potter go, of course, but she’d expected much more difficulty in talking the Minister around to her side.  
  
“Why is that?” she finally asked, when she saw from the expectant tilt of Bagnold’s head that she was waiting for the question.  
  
“Because there are others who would try to bring him back to his Muggle relatives,” Bagnold said, and looked at Potter. He had wandered over to the side of the room to stare at the moving photographs. Dolores couldn’t interpret the expression on his face very well. “And others who would agree with Dumbledore. And others who would raise him without—a firm hand, let us say.”  
  
“The firm hand I can provide,” said Dolores mildly, although her heart felt as if it would explode through her throat. But in truth, she knew why the Minister was letting her keep Potter. She was the one who had ended up with him, and she was more favorable to the Ministry than many of the most prominent they could find.  
  
 _And I don’t have much power. She must think that having Potter with me won’t increase it that much. Letting someone like Mr. Malfoy take him would make the Malfoys too independent._  
  
Dolores quieted her thoughts, especially as she noticed Potter turning back to watch her fearfully. “But not too firm, of course,” she said, and smiled at him. Potter smiled back, a little tremor at the corner of his mouth.  
  
Dolores would have to correct that. She hated signs of weakness in children.  
  
“Of course not.” Bagnold walked over once more to shake Potter’s hand and pat him on the head. “After all, we still owe Mr. Potter an enormous debt for all he did for our world.”  
  
From the wild eyes that Potter turned on Dolores, he didn’t understand that debt. That was all right. Dolores could teach him.  
  
She would teach him everything. How to react as a wizard, how grateful children acted towards their guardians, why the Ministry was right and worth following. All the things that she had often thought parents should teach their children, if they wanted them to grow up into responsible citizens instead of the brats most of them insisted on being.  
  
And her power would grow because of that. Dolores had never believed that the hand that rocked the cradle was the hand that ruled the world, but she _could_ believe that the hand that disciplined the celebrity was the hand that wielded the fame.  
  
 _There is power here like nothing else in the wizarding world. But no one else has the wit to grasp it._  
  
And when Dolores held her hand out and smiled again, Potter came over and took it.  
  



	3. Dolores's House

  
“Good morning, Miss Dolores.”  
  
In the end, that had been the best address for the boy to use, Dolores had decided. It was less formal than she would have liked in other circumstances, but when they were out in public or someone came to interfere and spy in the house, she couldn’t seem too distant from Potter. She had to present the picture of stern but kind disciplinarian.  
  
Or rather, Potter had to present it. Dolores knew herself to be really that way. It was just that people didn’t usually see it.  
  
“Good morning, Harry,” she said, and set the paper down. “This morning, we’re going to have lessons on the proper way to pour milk into a cup.”  
  
Potter nodded and picked up the cup and saucer she had waiting for him, as well as the delicate white pitcher of milk, decorated with frolicking blue kittens. He had looked at it strangely the first time he saw it, as if he wasn’t used to cats. Now he kept his eyes where they should be, on her face.  
  
“You must be careful with it,” said Dolores, and made sure that her own cup and saucer were arranged properly in front of her. She could hardly blame the boy for picking up bad habits if she didn’t model the right ones for him, and it would be such a bore to take them out of him. “You must handle the pitcher or other vessel the correct way, and yet never give your conversational partner the impression that you aren’t paying attention to them.”  
  
She picked up the pitcher and tilted it at the correct angle, aware of Potter’s eyes on her all the while. He had a mania for learning. Dolores supposed the Muggles had sparked that in him. She only had to undo a few of the things he had learned about Muggle superiority and “freaks” from them.  
  
“Look people in the eye, but not directly in the eye, not often. They’ll take that as hostile or confrontational. On the other hand, looking away too much is also a bad thing. It makes you look furtive or thieving.”  
  
Potter absorbed her words, and he was looking at her in much the right way. He had uncontrollable nervousness about meeting adult eyes, though, which made him glance down often. Dolores tapped her tongue against her teeth, a chiding sound. Potter flushed and looked up again.  
  
“You don’t want to hear me make that sound at the table with you, Harry,” she told him. “Or at any other time.”  
  
“No, Madam.” Dolores didn’t even have to raise an eyebrow, since Potter immediately corrected himself. “No, Miss Dolores.”  
  
“Better,” said Dolores, and smiled, although Potter had his head ducked so he didn’t see it. That was all right. The best patterns for people to follow were the ones that got trained into them, making it hard for them to disobey. Inner promptings were more powerful than outside ones, always. “Now, recite the lesson about history that I set you to learn yesterday.”  
  
As Potter did, letting his voice glide through the words about his own defeat of You-Know-Who and the Ministry’s role in the immediate aftermath, Dolores wondered again why no one from Dumbledore’s side had contacted her yet. There had been articles about her adoption of the Boy-Who-Lived, of course. She had stood there smoothing his hair and answering questions and listening to Potter give his perfect, coached responses.  
  
But neither Dumbledore nor the Ministry officials popularly thought to be allied with him had made any motion.  
  
 _Perhaps they’re waiting until they think I’m off my guard._  
  
Dolores shrugged a little, without letting her shoulders actually move. They would never find her that way, so that in case, it was a strategy that only played into her hands. The more time passed, the more Potter trusted her and became hers.  
  
And if he knew true history, not the lies that Muggle-loving wizards wanted to spread, and he had full control of his celebrity in a way that few people in their world would know about, because so few wizards had had this kind of celebrity…  
  
What were the limits to what she could accomplish?  
  
*  
  
The limits were pretty far away, Dolores thought, on the day an owl from Dumbledore arrived and she realized that she wasn’t afraid.  
  
“Who is that from?” Potter asked, standing beside her and holding his head up in the proper way Dolores had taught him. He’d been inclined to complain that it hurt his neck at first, but Dolores had only had to glance at him, and Potter subsided.  
  
“The man who left you with the Muggles,” Dolores said. She said it absently, turning over the letter as if enchanted with the sight of the thick parchment and the Hogwarts crest on the front. But she was keeping a sharp eye on Potter, and she saw the way his hands jerked.  
  
He had strong feelings on the topic of his Muggle relatives. He needed some coaxing to tell her what they’d done—apparently he’d tried to complain to Muggle authorities before and not been listened to, which lowered Dolores’s opinion of Muggle authorities to the height of a mouse’s tail—but once she knew, Dolores could use it as a lever.  
  
And she had told him several times that Dumbledore had been the one to put him there, but apart from asking what he would do when he went to the school the man controlled, Potter hadn’t seemed to pay much attention to the name. Now he stared intently at the letter, and then up at her. Since he glanced aside a second later, and since his strong emotion was so commendable, Dolores forbore to punish him.  
  
“What will happen now?”  
  
“We have to make some sort of response, of course.” Dolores put the letter aside without bothering to read it. Long experience with others’ recitations had taught her exactly what Dumbledore’s brand of manipulation was like. She bent down in front of Potter, who was staring up at her dubiously. “Or rather, you have to look as if you were making it all by yourself.”  
  
Potter swallowed and nodded. “Otherwise he’ll think that you’re controlling me and teaching me to despise Muggles, right?”  
  
That made Dolores pause. She wanted Potter to use his brain, since it would make him less tiresome to teach, but only in the ways she approved of. If he was going to be troublesome, she would have to punish him.  
  
But this time, the words were earnest, and the truth. Dolores let it go. “Yes, that’s right. And you have to tell him a little about how they treated you.”  
  
Potter flinched and curled in on himself. Dolores reached over and calmly pinched his shoulder. Potter straightened up at once.  
  
“But then everyone will _know_ ,” he whispered. “And they’ll use it as a weapon against me.”  
  
Dolores had been about to ask, again, why he was so paranoid about someone finding out the truth, but of course she understood perfectly then. And the boy made a good point. There was every chance that someone would decide he must a weakling for not standing up to Muggles.  
  
“Choose something you can tell him that would make him feel sorry for you but not make you look weak,” she said. “Something about the way they treated you. They must be something.”  
  
Potter bowed his head, thinking. Dolores eyed his shaggy hair with disfavor. She wanted to cut it, make him look presentable, but on the other hand, if she did that, then Potter would lose one of the things everyone knew about him, one of the marks that linked him to his parents. She had to be seen as raising the son of James and Lily Potter. Not making him over into her own image.  
  
 _No matter how much better that image would be._  
  
“The cupboard,” Potter finally said, looking up. “It’s where I slept. He might feel sorry for me because I wouldn’t have a bedroom, but on the other hand, they put me there when I was a baby. It’s not weak or my fault.”  
  
His voice quavered a little on the last words. But Dolores was too busy thinking it over in puzzlement to respond. Why have him sleep in a cupboard? Not even house-elves did that. They generally had a bed of rags in the kitchen or the nursery or the bathroom, wherever their most immediate duties would take them. Cupboards were for storing things.  
  
 _Muggles. Who can understand them?_  
  
Dolores let that go, too. She was really too forbearing for the boy’s own good, but at the moment, they had a larger enemy coming who would have to occupy both of their attention. “It’s not. That would be a good thing to tell him.” And the boy looked up like a flower to the sun for her praise. “How much time did you spend in there?”  
  
“All the time, unless I was in school or doing chores for them.”  
  
“That will make a good thing to say,” said Dolores. “Try to appear pathetic but not too pathetic when you’re talking to him. Cast your eyes down and then look up again. Don’t look him directly in the eye too often. You should appear to be a respectful child.”  
  
“Am I going to have to answer questions?”  
  
“From him? No.” Dolores smiled tightly. “I’m going to field the questions. Don’t worry, dear.”  
  
Potter never looked like he believed her endearments, but that was all right. Dolores was no longer sure that she wanted a boy who acted all the time as if he did.  
  
She wrote a polite response to the meddling Muggle-lover’s letter and sent it off. And then she began to clean around the house, leading the boy around and showing him the proper use of domestic charms. She half-thought he would protest because of the work his relatives had put him to, but he only appeared enthralled, and took the wand to use it when she instructed him to.  
  
He managed one of the charms on only the third try, too. Dolores relaxed. If he was _really_ powerful and that wasn’t simply a creation of Dumbledore’s publicity campaign, then she could use him even more in the future.   
  
*  
  
They met Dumbledore in the receiving room Dolores had decorated in blue and white china cat plates, and with a mantel of river stones. Fancy but not too fancy, it suited Dolores’s notions of what was due a visitor.  
  
“Headmaster Dumbledore,” said Dolores, giving him the least of his titles so they would understand how they stood with each other. Potter stood stiff and straight at her side, his body vibrating a little, perhaps with his hatred. Dolores could feel it where he stood against her, and she glanced at him with a small frown.  
  
If the vibration was hatred or terror, he had to put them aside. If it was anger, that might be useful, but only in an older person. Dolores, after seeing how many brats threw tantrums, didn’t trust a child to use anger properly.  
  
“Harry, my boy!” said Dumbledore, after the barest nod at Dolores. Dolores ground her teeth. She had never heard that Dumbledore was rude. On the other hand, he normally charmed everyone, so maybe people just excused the rudeness as wonderful eccentricity.  
  
She wondered how long it would take Dumbledore to realize that he was in the presence of someone who wouldn’t.  
  
Potter looked at Dumbledore with a blank face that did suit Dolores. They’d worked on that, the emotionless mask he should use with people who believed foolish things about him or presumed on a familiarity that didn’t exist. “Do I know you, sir?” he asked, without holding out his hand to take the one being offered to him.  
  
Dumbledore lowered his hand and smiled without a sign that such a thing offended him. “Not as such, my boy, but I was a good friend of your parents. Visited them several times when they were under the Fidelius, you know.” He chuckled and sent a single piercing glance at Dolores for a second, then turned, ignoring her as if she was a Muggle. “Saw you when you were a baby. And saw you soon after the sad event that left you orphaned.” He bowed his head.  
  
Thanks to Dolores, though, Potter knew all about that event, and he had read the _proper_ sort of history books, the ones that made doubtful noises about whether such a young baby could have been a savior without ever coming right out and saying it. He only blinked a little more and moved closer to Dolores.  
  
“You were the one who put me on a Muggle doorstep? My aunt told me about that.”  
  
“I left you with your relatives, yes.” Dumbledore seemed to realize he had to be careful now, but from the way he studied Potter, Dolores didn’t think he knew what kind of care it was. “I’m said to hear you refer to Muggles in that tone, my boy. They’re no different from you and me.”  
  
Potter took a deep breath. Dolores tensed. This could be the moment when he lost it and started yelling at people. Yes, she wanted him to hate Dumbledore, but he had to make the right impression.  
  
“They put me in a cupboard, sir. They kept me there.”  
  
Dumbledore stared at him. Dolores waited. She thought Potter had given just the right amount of detail. If Dumbledore pressed him on it, they would be better able to control the interaction.  
  
Dumbledore smiled and said, “It must be some sort of misunderstanding.” This time, he did glance at Dolores. “They didn’t use that as his bedroom?”  
  
“Yes, they did,” said Dolores, and had never been so glad that she’d worked at perfecting a sweet voice as when she saw how it took Albus Dumbledore aback. “As a bedroom, as punishment, as a place where he was every time he wasn’t at school or doing chores.” She placed a hand on Potter’s shoulder and squeezed a little. “Harry told me that himself.”  
  
Dumbledore turned slowly back to Potter. His jaw was tight. “That doesn’t make them bad people, Harry,” he said, as if pleading with Potter. “You must see that it doesn’t. And you mustn’t hate all Muggles for that. Muggles are people, like us. Some of them as good as you. Some of them as bad as wizards like Voldemort who killed your parents.”  
  
Dolores jumped, and after weeks with her, so did Potter. Dumbledore noted it, and paused. “I hope that you will never be afraid of a name, Harry.”  
  
“I think it’s a good idea to be afraid of the man who killed my parents,” Harry whispered, and shrank against her.  
  
Dolores intervened then. “I must register a slight objection to you addressing my charge so informally, Headmaster. Unless and until you reclaim the personal relationship that you had with him when he was a baby, you should call him Mr. Potter.”  
  
Dumbledore gave her another of those piercing glances that seemed to read her mind. “Don’t imagine that I’m ignorant of the motives with which you adopted him, Madam Umbridge.”  
  
 _Maybe he is a Legilimens._ But the context of the conversation, the fact that Dumbledore wouldn’t want to show her too much disrespect in front of a child she’d taken in as her own, gave Dolores the advantage in this contest. She shook her head a little. “Of course I would want to rescue him from abusive Muggles, Headmaster. You speak as if someone might not want to.” She paused, and blinked, and adopted the fake shocked tone that worked so well with Crouch. “Perhaps you wouldn’t want to, sir? After you left him on their doorstep?”  
  
“I do not do that intending for any abuse to happen!”  
  
Dolores shrank back. For an instant, Dumbledore seemed to tower up to the rafters of her house, and his eyes and his beard both seemed to flash with lightning.  
  
But Dolores was still in her own home, and she knew she had Harry Potter on her side. She shook her head. “I took him in. I will raise him, as per the Minister’s say-so. It turns out that Harry has no close wizarding relatives in any case, or they would have stepped forwards to adopt him already. And with his godfather in prison…”  
  
Dumbledore stared at her, the stony stare that he seemed to think should make her afraid. But Dolores was more afraid of curses, and political consequences. She looked back, one arm wrapping around Harry slightly when he acted as if he would move away from her.  
  
“I will challenge this,” Dumbledore said in a low voice. “I did not want his family to abuse Harry. But I must insist that he not be raised someone who does not have his best interests at heart.”  
  
Dolores gave him another sweet smile. “And I must insist that you not call him by his first name.”  
  
Dumbledore seemed to have gone back to pretending that she didn’t exist. He turned and nodded to Potter. “I will make sure that you don’t suffer as a result of one poor decision I made, Harry. I will do better by you this time.”  
  
Potter only looked at him with those devastatingly clear green eyes. He said nothing, and maybe Dumbledore, as he hurried out the door, took that as consent. But Dolores knew better. Potter hardly trusted adults who made promises like that, not when so many adults had broken them already.  
  
“Can he take me away?” Potter whispered, turning to look at her.  
  
“No,” said Dolores. “Because I’ll make sure of it.” Time to start contacting those people who owed her favors. And Minister Bagnold, who wouldn’t want to be made to look silly after she had consented to let Dolores adopt Harry Potter. And some people like Lucius Malfoy, who had nothing to do with her normally but who would definitely want to be present if there was a chance to reduce Dumbledore’s power.  
  
“But how do I know you will?”  
  
Dolores looked down and smiled, glad that Legilimency, if it was a power Dumbledore possessed, couldn’t manifest in one so young. “I’m here,” she said. “Harry.”  
  
And Potter, who was indeed much more intelligent than she would have thought the child of two Muggle-lovers could be, understood. She was there, and she was the one who could make her will known, punish him as well as save him.   
  
“The question,” Dolores continued delicately, “is whether _you_ want to stay with _me_.”  
  
Potter’s shoulders hunched, and she could almost hear him run over the choices in his head: the Muggles who had hated him, Dumbledore who had already treated him carelessly, or her. And he looked up and nodded.  
  
“I know you,” he said.   
  
_That understanding is always going to trump Dumbledore’s little ideals,_ Dolores thought in triumph, and caressed Potter’s hair.  
  



	4. The Wizengamot Courtroom

“There’s going to be a _trial_?”

Dolores used her wand to touch Potter’s cheek. She touched, then she tapped, and she would have made her way to poking if Potter hadn’t remembered his manners and produced a smile. Dolores studied the smile in the mirror of her dresser and decided it would do.

“Yes.” Dolores continued to run her wand over the dress robes she’d bought Potter, finding and correcting the minor imperfections. She had no access to Potter’s trust vault and would probably avoid it if she did, because too many people would criticize her for that and this was a delicate time. Much cheaper to buy semi-nice dress robes and adjust them herself with the charms she’d learned for that. “You remember all those owls I sent last week?”

She didn’t look up, even though she could feel Potter nodding. After a second, Potter remembered his lessons and delivered the verbal response she’d spent the last three days coaching into him. “Yes, Miss Dolores.”

“Well, most of them went to people who either might side with Dumbledore or might side with us.” Dolores cleared away another snagged thread and stood up with a satisfied nod. “Yes, I think that will do.”

“What did the owls ask them to do, Miss Dolores?”

_At least the child’s manners are improving._ That, along with the verbal answers, would be important in the face of the Wizengamot and its pure-blood, old-fashioned members. “I asked them to consider whether they _really_ wanted to give custody of you to Albus Dumbledore.”

From the swallow, Potter was thinking through it and utterly unable to imagine what they would say, despite the lessons Dolores had given him in the history and politics of the Wizengamot ever since she’d adopted him. “What do you think they’ll say?”

“It’ll be a close-run thing,” Dolores admitted, without any reluctance. Not only did the boy need to know politics if he was going to be a credit to her instead of a problem, but an edge of fear would be no bad thing for his relation to her. “Dumbledore is powerful. He’s been Headmaster at Hogwarts for more than a generation of schoolchildren now. He has many people on the Wizengamot who either like him or owe him debts—”

“Monetary debts?”

_Even his vocabulary is improving._ Because of that, Dolores let the impertinence of the interruption pass, and merely nodded. “Yes, but more likely personal favors that he’s granted them or times that he saved their entire family from being ruined.”

“If he saves people from starving…is he a good man?”

“Perhaps a good man, Harry,” Dolores said, and caught those green eyes in the mirror again. “But entirely the wrong person to have charge of you.”

Potter looked down again and nodded. His fringe flopped across his scar. Dolores considered it. On the one hand, she wanted the potential power of that scar on display; on the other, Potter wanted to hide it, and too obviously trying to make him do something he didn’t want to do would only backfire on her.

In the end, she left it alone and cast a few more charms on his robes that would make them look the perfect blend of an adult’s and a child’s, and then stepped back to admire her work. Potter looked up at her in the mirror at the same time.

“And you’ll be there, Miss Dolores?”

Dolores smiled. Commendable, the catch in the back of his throat. She couldn’t ask for anything better right now, not when she’d had custody of him for such a short time. “You’ll see me the entire time,” she promised.

*

“Was it really necessary to call the _full_ Wizengamot for this, Albus? If you doubted my decision of custodial parent for Harry Potter so much, you should have talked to me first, instead of calling on _everyone_ else.”

Dolores hid her smile as she stood beside the chair in which Potter was sitting. He shook like a leaf. On the other hand, that wasn’t a bad thing, either. Dolores could easily paint him as being afraid of Dumbledore.

And Minster Bagnold was on their side, from what she was saying, now.

_Not a bad beginning,_ Dolores thought, and turned to face Dumbledore, standing in response to Bagnold’s accusation. His face was grave.

“No matter can be more important than where the Savior of the Wizarding World grows up, Millicent.” He turned to address the rest of the Wizengamot, and something winked on his chest. Dolores squinted. Yes, he was wearing _all_ the medals and honors that people had ever given him. It made him look as if he had armor on.

_Feeling like you need it, old man?_

“You all know my feeling on Voldemort—”

Dolores hissed before she could stop herself. Potter looked at her, surprised, and then sank down in the chair when she frowned at him.

“That he is not dead, and shall return someday,” Dumbledore continued, with only a quick glance at the boy he claimed to be so concerned about. “That means that we need to know where Harry Potter is, and that he has a good and loving home. He needs to be kept safe from those in the wizarding world who would either harm him or overpraise him.”

Minister Bagnold frowned. “Why was having him grow up with abusive Muggles the better choice, Albus?”

_There._ That revelation hadn’t been public before, although Dolores had included it in several of the owls she sent out. And people started mumbling and whispering now. Potter had his lip between his teeth and was holding his breath.

Dolores tapped the back of his head until he started breathing again. No one was to think they could render him helpless by a reference to his relatives.

“Abusive?” asked one of the people Dolores hadn’t informed.

“ _Really_?” asked someone she had.

The buzz was already getting out of hand when Dumbledore held up his wand to calm it, and even then it didn’t stop until he cast _Sonorus_ on himself. Dolores shifted closer to Potter as Dumbledore’s voice boomed out. _Yes, do sound as if you’re shouting. I’m sure that will endear you to the boy immensely._

“I did not know that his Muggle relatives would abuse him. Of course I am sorry for that.”

Dumbledore had an extraordinarily effective gaze, one Dolores had thought about copying, but she knew she didn’t have the natural warmth for it. Now he rested that gaze on the boy and didn’t move it.

“But I did judge that the risk was less than if he remained in our world, where a Death Eater could always strike at him.”

Potter squirmed—and not because he didn’t know what a Death Eater was. Histories of the war and his role in it, Dolores had made even more of a priority than the history of the Wizengamot. Dolores nodded to him.

“Death Eaters would have killed me?” Potter asked, raising his head to stare at Dumbledore.

_He’ll be able to pull that warm gaze off,_ Dolores thought clinically. She could feel people melting and sighing all around the room. Some of them were murmuring about the likeness to his dear dead father, and others simply thought those _eyes_ were so bright.

“Yes, Harry, they would have.”

“But they would have done it quickly, right? Not starved me and locked me in a cupboard for years? They said the cupboard was my bedroom.”

Dolores looked down at Potter and clasped her hands over her mouth as if to keep from crying out in pity. In reality, it was to hide her smile.

Who knew that Potter would be _that_ advanced in asking questions? Or in asking ones that made Dumbledore uncomfortable while personally appealing to his audience? Dolores felt a strange sensation warming her chest and cheeks, and identified it as pride.

She would decide later if she should tell Potter about it. There was the chance that it might swell his head, after all.

_Not that I wish to sound like Dumbledore,_ Dolores said, and released her hands from her mouth, and turned around to say in her softest and most charming voice to Dumbledore, “It’s an interesting question for one so young, isn’t it, Headmaster? And speaks to the horrors that these Muggles must have inflicted on him.”

Dumbledore glared at her. Dolores looked back. She could imagine twitching and curling up under that gaze a short time ago. She’d never meant to confront Dumbledore head on like this, honestly.

But she’d had to, and the potential gains were too great to give up without a fight.

“The Death Eaters could have hurt you with magic, Harry,” Dumbledore said, and chose to turn back to the boy after all. He probably thought he was demonstrating his contempt of Dolores, but in reality, it could also make him look as if he didn’t dare to face her. “With magic that you would have no idea how to defend against.”

“Whose fault is that? _Sir_.”

Amid the murmuring, Minister Bagnold rose to her feet, eyes bright. Dolores had never heard that she was on terrible terms with the Headmaster of Hogwarts, but of course she would take every chance she could to extend her power. “I do have a question, Albus. Why did you leave the boy with those particular Muggles?”

“I believe I’ve answered that already, Millicent. He was in terrible danger if he grew up in our world.”

“I’d rather be in danger than growing up with the Dursleys!”

No part of this outburst had been planned, and yet Dolores placed her hand on Potter’s shoulder in support and approval. It was scattering Dumbledore’s strategies. If she couldn’t plan for it, neither could he.

“But that is because you do not understand the gravity of the danger, Harry,” Dumbledore said, trying to return to his conversation with Potter. “If you did—”

“I was talking more about the legal point than the moral one, Albus.” The Minister folded her arms. “Why did _you_ decide to put the boy with the Dursleys? And why were they chosen? I know I had owls from dozens of families after Mr. Potter disappeared, all of them offering to foster or adopt the boy.”

“And were any of them families such as the Malfoys?” Dumbledore asked, turning on the Minister like a serpent. “Any other families of accused Death Eaters, who might have made sure that Harry did not live even to the age he has reached?”

Potter shrank against Dolores, although she thought it was more at the tone than the words. There would be many things here that he did not understand.

_Yet,_ Dolores couldn’t wait to continue his education.

“In fact, I didn’t receive any offers from families who had a member arrested as a Death Eater.” Minister Bagnold managed to look as though she was embodying all the power of the Ministry at the moment. Dolores highly approved. That was the way it _should_ be. Only the Ministry contained enough collective wisdom to direct the destinies of the wizarding world. “They were rather busy with other things. But from different families? Yes, I did. Including ones that you wouldn’t approve of. And I find it _highly_ disturbing, Albus, that you would consider the suitability of the boy’s future home to be based on whether they were political opponents to _you_ or not.”

Another wave of murmurs. Dolores looked around, counting. Yes, there were more faces than not who wore expressions of revelation. Some would be swayed by the Minister; others would see that their neighbors were, and think they should agree rather than try and stand up in defense of Dumbledore.

Power shimmered in her chest, and she put her hand over her heart for a moment. It was laboring harder than it used to when her parents made her exercise.

She _loved_ politics.

Potter stirred against her and looked up at her. Dolores looked down and mouthed the words, “It will be all right.” She didn’t see any way it couldn’t be, not now, what with the Minister’s magnificent counterattack.

But Dumbledore was already rallying for another strike.

“I made the decisions because there was no one else there to make them,” he said, voice low and impassioned, and Dolores saw some people’s expressions change again. “Harry’s godfather was not there to take charge of him. I had known Lily and James as well as anyone else did. _Someone_ must be found to take care of him. I could hardly leave a baby alone in a destroyed house.”

“Would keeping him at Hogwarts for a few days count as keeping him alone? Even for a week?”

Dumbledore’s lips were pinched. A second later, he shook his head and smiled. That was his twinkly-eyed impression, Dolores supposed. She knew it fooled a lot of people.

But not her. And not Minister Bagnold. And from the way Potter was frowning up at the Headmaster, not him, either.

“I wanted to make sure that young Harry reached the care of blood relatives as soon as possible,” Dumbledore repeated. “James had no living relatives, and Lily no others. There was no one else with such a good right to raise him after the imprisonment of his godfather.”

Dolores perked up immediately. One of the things she had done in preparation for this day was study trial transcripts extensively, and she had found an interesting discrepancy—well, it was a discrepancy with what Dumbledore had said just now. She wouldn’t have noted it otherwise.

“Headmaster Dumbledore,” she said, and bowed her head a little when he turned to look at her, “wasn’t Sirius Black arrested _after_ you left Mr. Potter with the Dursleys?” She petted Harry’s hair and watched Dumbledore’s face. “Why did you have to take him away so soon? Surely Mr. Black’s guilt wasn’t established yet.”

“I knew he had been the Potters’ Secret-Keeper. I knew—”

“I used to wish I’d died with my parents. I thought they died in a car crash. But it was still true.”

Dolores stared down at Potter. She doubted that more than half the Wizengamot knew what a car was, and she opened her mouth to scold him into silence. He was damaging their showing by making such statements.

But Potter was not going to hush, she saw in an instant. He had risen to his feet from the witness’s chair. He had his fists clenched, and the first healthy color Dolores had seen in his cheeks. He was glaring straight at Dumbledore.

“They made me _wish_ I was dead. They called me a freak, and I didn’t even know about magic until Miss Dolores found me, so I didn’t even know _why_. They made me sleep in a cupboard under the stairs, and do all the chores, and starved me, and they—they didn’t care. I would rather face a Death Eater. Why was it so important for them to take me? Why did you _do_ that?”

He sat down and covered up his face, and his shoulders shook a little. Dolores knew he was trying to hide the fact that he was crying.

And most of the time, she would encourage that behavior. Children shouldn’t sob in public, and as little as possible at home. But now, she knelt and took his hands and moved them off his face, and let the whole Wizengamot see his tears, the mute testimony, more powerful than words, of what the Muggles had done to him.

*

Dumbledore never stood a chance of gaining custody of Potter, after that.

The Wizengamot resolved, quickly, that he should remain in Dolores’s care. And they resolved that there would be an investigation into what had happened with Sirius Black and the date that Potter had actually been put on the Dursleys’ doorstep, and why Dumbledore had been the one to do it.

Regrettably, Dolores wasn’t able to stay and listen to those proceedings, nor the ones that might see Dumbledore reduced in power. Their part of the case was settled, and Potter’s fragility meant that asking to stay would be seen as a betrayal of her responsibilities.

Minister Bagnold came herself, during the pause and reshuffling that happened after those resolutions were taken, to escort Dolores and Potter from the room. “Thank you for doing this,” she said to Dolores, and gazed at Potter with misty eyes of her own. “I can’t imagine what I would do if I found out a child I cared for had been mistreated in such a way.”

“It’s been a trial for both of us,” said Dolores, and bowed her head, because that was the way she begged best. She kept stroking Potter’s hair, and felt him tremble where he was leaning against her. “But I do wonder, Minister…you see, it’s just that I never expected to have the care of a child without forewarning like this. I was wondering if I might receive some assistance from the Department in charge of child placement?”

“Better than that,” said Bagnold briskly, and leaned towards them, even though this particular corridor connected with a back door out of the courtroom and no one was immediately around. “I highly suspect that Dumbledore, based on what he said today, has Mr. Potter’s vault key. _That_ should go to his legal guardian, of course. We’ll do it immediately.”

Dolores kept her head bowed. Her smiles always gave her away unless she could carefully control them. “Thank you, Minister.”

_Altogether, this is a day of triumph._


	5. A Place of Madness

"Why do all these people keep trying to write to me? I'm no one special!"

Potter had to yell the words. The main dining room of Dolores's house was full of the noise of screeching, flapping, jostling, pecking owls. All of them had packages or letters of some kind attached to their legs. Only Howlers were missing. Dolores was glad she had already spent some of Potter's vault money on a twist of a defensive spell that would keep them away.

And it was even for Potter's own good. That was the part that made Dolores smile when she lay in bed at night. It was so _easy_ to do something that others would define as good, or part of taking care of Potter. She didn't know why Dumbledore had never managed it.

"What have I told you about raising your voice, Harry?" Dolores was currently studying a grey owl that looked as if it might collapse and die in the next few seconds. It was held up more by the owls on either side of it than anything else. Perhaps it was only asleep, not dying. But Dolores wanted to be on the alert in case she had to clean up a corpse in the next few moments.

"Not to do it, Miss Dolores."

She only heard him because she was concentrating so intently on the words, but Dolores nodded anyway. Then she turned around and took Potter's hand, leading him into the next room. The owls tried to follow them. The door, however, sealed with a cleaning spell that would keep out any fur or feathers, flared at them and forced them back.

Dolores closed the door and turned to face Potter. She had furnished this room in a dark green--it held the photo albums, her school scarf, and several other reminders of her old school House--and he looked as if he was disappearing into it as he raised his head appealingly to look at her.

"You are somebody special," she said. "As far as the average witch or wizard is concerned. You are not _important_ in the way you were telling me about, the way that your aunt and uncle treated your cousin. Or the way the Minister and the Wizengamot are important. Never that."

"Yes, Miss Dolores." Potter bowed his head submissively. The one good legacy from his Muggles was how easy he was to tame.

Dolores patted his head. "But there are consequences to your fame," she said, and gave the closed door a thoughtful glance. She had hoped that maybe seeing all those owls and packages would teach Potter something of his place in their world. It hadn't worked out that way. Not if he raised his voice.

She made up her mind and turned back to him. "I know you despise Headmaster Dumbledore, Harry."

Potter nodded, but didn't speak. He _must_ be more intelligent than he looked, Dolores thought for the fiftieth time.

"But he did have one good idea, even if he executed it in the wrong way. Some of those packages or letters could contain poison or Portkeys. Or even simply enchanted parchments that would begin to function if you touched them. You need protection, Harry. You need someone who will hold you back from doing exactly what you want until you learn more about the wizarding world and you can protect yourself."

"Yes, Miss Dolores. I know."

"I don't think you know all the consequences of what can happen if you're not protected." Dolores stood up. The place she wanted to visit normally needed an appointment if one didn't already have relatives there, but she was utterly certain they would make an exception for the Boy-Who-Lived. "Come. There's something I want to show you."

*

“Where are we, Miss Dolores?”

Potter whispered the words, sticking as close to her side as a feral cat to the shadows. Dolores glanced down at him and spoke patiently. “What did you hear me say when we went through the Floo, Harry?”

“St. Mungo’s. I just—it’s a hospital?”

Dolores nodded and moved down the white corridor, holding her wand out and bringing Potter forwards with a hand on his shoulder so his scar would show more clearly to the mediwitch hurrying towards them. “A request by Mr. Harry Potter to visit the Janus Thickey Ward.”

The mediwitch gasped and clapped her hands together at her breast, staring at them with starry-eyed wonder. “Harry Potter! And you must be his guardian, the Miss Dolores Umbridge I heard so much about!” She reached out and shook Dolores’s hand until her arm hurt. “You’ve done so much good in such a short time!”

_I could get used to this._

“Does Mr. Potter want to make a donation?” asked the mediwitch, scuttling ahead of them and looking back over her shoulder. Some of her bronze hair fell in her eyes. Dolores saw a tear near the bottom of her robe, too. “Of course St. Mungo’s would welcome any amount, no matter how small, but—”

“Not today, thank you. Today, we are here to study the consequences of the war.”

The mediwitch’s smile faltered a little. “Is it true that Mr. Potter didn’t know anything about the war and his fame until you brought him back to our world, Madam Umbridge?” she whispered, slinking back towards them.

Potter muttered something under his breath, probably to do with him being right there and the mediwitch being able to ask him herself if she wanted to. Dolores pinched his shoulder without looking at him and said, “That’s true. And there are no lessons as graphic as the ones St. Mungo’s teaches.”

“That’s true, that’s very true!” said the mediwitch, although Dolores thought she was only repeating Dolores’s last words for lack of anything else to say. “Please, come. I’ll make sure everything is in order for your visit.” And she clattered up the stairs in front of them, waving her wand and muttering under her breath. Dolores was amused to notice some of the cobwebs and dust in the corners disappearing.

“What are we going to see?”

“Some of the consequences of the war.”

That at least made Potter subside, although Dolores wondered how much longer he would last before he needed another reminder. He was a stubborn child. In some ways, that was good, as it had allowed his spirit to stay alive among the Muggles.

In other ways, it was not. He needed correction and chastisement and cautions that he was not the center of the universe. But Dolores was the one who had the training of him. That meant he would receive his much-needed education better than any other child.

_And this shall be very educational._

*

“Wh-what’s wrong with them?”

Potter’s voice was very quiet. Dolores gripped his shoulder and steered him further in, even though he looked as if he would have liked to linger near the door of the ward. 

His eyes were locked on the two people Dolores had brought him to see. It was sheer luck that Dolores had been here with Minister Bagnold on a previous tour and remembered that their beds were some of the first. And that they hadn’t been moved in the meantime.

Of course, Dolores dismissed the notion of luck a second later. _What looks like luck is most often careful planning._

“These are the people I brought you here to see, Harry,” she said, and bent down to whisper in his ear. Potter’s eyes were locked on the two gently staring and hand-flapping people in the beds. “Their names are Frank and Alice Longbottom. In the last war, they fought on the same side as your parents, against You-Know-Who. They were close friends of your parents. I think,” she finished with a frown. That was something she hadn’t realized she was so uncertain of.

Potter was shaking. “But—they didn’t end up like that because they were cursed?’

“In a way, they did,” said Dolores, a little regretful that there was no non-Unforgivable curse that caused the same symptoms as had left the Longbottoms drooling wrecks. It would have been useful more than once in her life. “They were held under what’s called the Cruciatus Curse. I know I mentioned that to you last week. What is it?”

Potter was too occupied in staring at the Longbottoms to answer. Dolores pinched his shoulder again and wrenched a gasp from him. “I will have answers, Harry,” she said simply. 

“It’s a pain curse,” Potter finally mumbled. “The worst you can imagine, you said. You have to take the worst pain in the world and multiply it by ten.”

“By thirteen,” Dolores said, who was also trying to continue Potter’s education in symbolic numbers. “Or more than that. Most of the time, Dark wizards don’t use the curse very long. When they do…” She nodded at the Longbottoms.

Currently, the woman was playing with some sweets wrappers. She would pause and stare at them as if the secrets of the universe were written on them, then lay them carefully aside. A second later, she would pick up the ones she had discarded and look them over again.

The man simply stared at his hands. Then he picked them up and turned them back and forth in front of his face. A second later, he brought them down and put them in his lap again, then flopped back against his pillow with a sigh. His vacant stare traveled across the room’s walls and door. It paused on them, but Dolores thought that was only coincidence, given how he kept going a second later.

Dolores knelt down next to Potter, so no one could hear what she was going to say next. Certain words were necessary, especially since Potter was still so young and needed immediate lessons, but she didn’t want anyone else to hear them.

“Look at them, Potter. Look well. They were some of the last casualties of the war. Four Death Eaters who were frustrated by _your_ defeat of You-Know-Who went after the Longbottoms and cursed them in front of their son, who is almost exactly your age.”

“Then you’re saying—it was _my_ fault they’re like this, Miss Dolores?”

Dolores paused to consider that. On the one hand, she had already seen how useful guilt was as a leash on Potter. All she had to do was give him a disappointed look, and he would immediately clean up his room or finish his dish-washing or whatever other chore he had put off or not finished.

But she didn’t like the idea of this particular guilt competing with her influence over him, so she chose a different route.

“I didn’t bring you here to have you feel guilt, Harry. I brought you here to show you what can happen when you’re not careful. To show you that certain foes will stop at nothing to destroy you. That’s why you can’t disregard what the owls carry, or open them any way you like. Do you understand now?”

From Potter’s shivering and huge eyes, he did indeed. Dolores put a hand on his shoulder and patted it, then turned him gently towards the door of the ward. She thought the point had been made.

Unfortunately, they didn’t manage to emerge from the ward before Dolores had to stop to avoid slamming into a tall woman with a vulture on her hat. Dolores’s lip curled a little before she could stop herself. Didn’t this woman know vultures were at least ten years out of date?

Behind her was a chubby boy whom Dolores looked at carefully. Then she turned and glanced at the faces of the Longbottoms.

Yes, this was clearly their son.

Potter was looking at the boy with wide eyes. No doubt he was interested in other wizarding children. Well, Dolores intended to introduce him to suitable ones when the chance presented itself. She simply hadn’t contacted those families yet.

“Come along, Neville,” said the woman, and snatched the chubby boy’s hand to tow him to the bedside of the woman. “Talk to your mother.” _She_ turned and stared at the man a little desperately. Her son, Dolores remembered.

“Gran,” said Longbottom, fidgeting in a way that made Dolores suddenly glad that Harry had taken so well to instruction in how to stay still. “I think…I think that’s Harry Potter.” He turned and stared at Potter.

The woman looked around, but her mouth was pinched, and she still seemed more interested in her feeble-minded son than anyone else. “Then I’m sure you ought to go over and introduce yourself, Neville.”

Dolores knew she had to prevent _that_. The Longbottoms were perhaps the family that looked the most suitable on the surface, with a grandson just Potter’s age and a long record of spotless service to the Ministry and sometimes the Wizengamot. But this current generation was _pathetic_. Dolores had received reports from those in the know that Neville Longbottom was little above a Squib in strength, and he and his grandmother remained at home with barely any political excursions. 

Harry would have to form bonds with other people.

“Um, hi? Harry Potter. I’m Neville Longbottom.” The chubby boy was actually toddling forwards now, and his eyes focused with awe on the scar. Potter leaned against Dolores, and a small shiver ran through him.

Dolores could have burst out cheering, if she would ever do anything so undignified. Above everything else, Potter hated people staring at his scar. She put her hand on Potter’s shoulder and turned him, saying, “Come, Harry. It’s time we should head home.”

“Um, Harry? Potter?”

Dolores turned her head and gave Longbottom a chiding glance. He shrank away from her, his hands clenching. His grandmother was still preoccupied with murmuring something to his father, and would never notice.

“He doesn’t like people who only want to take advantage of his fame,” said Dolores, and correctly judged that she didn’t need to say anything else to this boy. He sank further into his shoulders and didn’t even mutter anything about how that wasn’t what he meant.

_Too bad that I cannot commend Mrs. Longbottom’s child-rearing in other ways,_ Dolores thought, as she swept Potter out of the closed ward. _It is more likely to be simple neglect than actual planning._

*

“Miss Dolores?”

It was the first time that Potter had sounded like he was going to ask her for something specific since the Wizengamot trial. Dolores put aside the paper, which had stories of Dumbledore’s fall from power that she’d been chuckling over, and gave him her attention. “Yes, Harry?”

Potter still tended to flush and go silent when she looked at him closely. Dolores allowed him to play with his fork for a minute, and then cleared her throat pointedly.

“I just—I think I need a friend,” Potter said at once, if in a mumble that Dolores had to concentrate to hear. “I thought that maybe the Neville boy could be one, but he can’t.” Dolores nodded, glad he had come to that conclusion with only the actions in front of him, and not any words. “But someone. Could I have one?”

Dolores pretended to consider it, then said, “I anticipated you would need one. So I already sent out an owl to a family who has a suitable boy near your age.”

Potter swallowed, and his eyes focused on her with such adoration that Dolores sighed a little. It was like being near a fire after she’d come back in from a chilly, cold evening.

“You _did_? You’re so wonderful, Miss Dolores.”

She had often found the artless emotions of children irritating, but they had their charm. Dolores smiled. “Don’t you want to know the family’s name?”

“When you want to tell me, Miss Dolores.”

“The Malfoy family.”

Potter snapped his head up, his eyes widening. “But—Miss Dolores, aren’t they accused Death Eaters?”

Dolores sighed. “Did you not read through the _whole_ of the history book I gave you, Harry? Only one member of the Malfoy family was accused of being a Death Eater, the current head, Lucius Malfoy. And he was only _accused_. It was later found out that he was under the Imperius Curse. And I know from our visit to St. Mungo’s that you remember your lesson on the Unforgivables.”

Potter’s throat bobbed again. “Yes, Miss Dolores. I just—wondered why he would allow his son to be friends with me. I mean, I know he wasn’t a Death Eater!” he added hastily, when Dolores fixed him with a patient look. “But he might feel embarrassed about being reminded of the war when he sees me.”

That was a feat of reasoning Dolores wouldn’t have expected from him, and she was mildly impressed. “It is his son who will spend the most time with you, and he is only a few months older than you, so only a baby when his father was accused,” she said firmly. “You won’t embarrass him. At least,” and she stopped and studied Potter carefully, “you had _better_ not embarrass him.”

Potter shivered. “No, Miss Dolores. I won’t.”

Dolores nodded. His second vault key had come that evening—once she had managed to chase the owls with irrelevant messages out of the window and retrieved the important ones—and she had enough money at her disposal for her next gracious gesture. “Then we go shopping for dress robes tomorrow. You’ll meet Draco in the afternoon. And you _will_ be on your best behavior. I shouldn’t even need to remind you of that, really,” she continued, reaching across the table to pat Harry’s hand. “But you’ve very young, so I’ll make an exception.”

“Thank you, Miss Dolores.” Potter hesitated, then continued, “For everything.”

_Yes, I could get used to this pride._


	6. The Drawing Room of Their Meeting

Dolores was glad that she was seated when the Malfoys arrived. She had spent a long time last night fretting about how to greet Lucius Malfoy. On the one hand, some of the etiquette books she had read as a girl recommended bowing; on the other hand, fashions changed, and Dolores hadn’t been powerful or wealthy for long enough to be sure of what the new ones were now.

But as it happened, the Malfoys arrived by Floo, and she was sitting and watching Potter as he tugged at the lacy collar of his dress robes and squirmed on his seat. By the time she turned her head, Lucius Malfoy had already stepped into the room, leading his son by the hand.

Dolores inclined her head. “Welcome, Mr. Malfoy.” She twiddled two fingers without moving the rest of her hand, and Potter immediately trotted up to her. She smiled at the small, pristine boy beside Lucius. “Draco?”

Seeing the boy gave her an odd twinge in her chest. Draco not only had clean cheeks and fine clothes, but he was tall for his age and had shining pale gold hair. Potter would never look like that, no matter how she fussed over him.

“I am.” And Draco swept a little bow that had grace in it which seemed adult. Dolores sighed. Maybe Potter would have had that if she had got to him younger. He never would now.

“And this is Harry.” Dolores gestured Potter forwards. He had to make the first impression by himself, even though she itched to turn his head in the right direction and whisper instructions in his ear.

Potter was pale, but he managed a creditable bow. Dolores didn’t think that was what made Draco stare in awe, though, to the point where his father coughed a little and frowned at him with the corner of his mouth.

_Of course. He’s looking at Potter’s scar._

Dolores’s confidence returned in a rush, though she was resolved it wasn’t going to make her do anything stupid. Yes, Potter still had a level of power here, one that even Malfoy children had to respect, if not Malfoy adults. And now that she thought about it, if he felt himself so above her, Lucius Malfoy would never have accepted her invitation in the first place. 

She rose and inclined her head in a subtle gesture that could be seen as a bow or a nod. “Would you like to see the playroom, Draco?”

*

“You understand that I am only here because of your ward.”

There was a subtle hesitation before Malfoy’s final word. Dolores delicately sipped at the tea in front of her, the most expensive kind she owned, and then folded her hands on her lap. She wondered if he had been about to say “adopted son” or something that would sound equally strange in his mouth.

“I know that, sir. I don’t have the bloodline or the political clout to make you look at me otherwise.”

Malfoy visibly settled into his seat on the other side of the table. “You understand, then,” he said, and ran a quick, expert eye over her. Dolores was wearing one of her nicer cardigans, a soft grey with a little green ribbon near the collar instead of any pink. It was a subtle reminder of the House origins they shared. “I thought that perhaps you contacted me simply because I’m politically powerful and you wanted to be close to that.”

“In truth, sir, I contacted you because you have a child Harry’s age. I want him to have the _right_ kind of friends.”

Malfoy folded his hand into a fist and set it under his chin. He was doing that to try and relax her, and Dolores knew it, and he knew she knew it.

She sipped the tea again to hide her smile. She _loved_ this game.

“If I hadn’t had a child, you wouldn’t have been interested in my support?”

“It would have been harder to come up with a convenient excuse for you to visit. And since I’m going to be under even stronger scrutiny than before, now that Dumbledore’s lost his chance at custody of the Boy-Who-Lived…”

“Interesting. A blunter way than I usually play, but I can appreciate its finer points. What do you propose as a trade?”

“Beyond giving the first friendship Harry has ever had to your son?” Dolores was watching for it, and saw the shifting of the slight wrinkles on his face that marked the widening of his eyes. She smiled a little. “I would like you to speak to the press when Dumbledore comes back to try to win Harry again, the way he inevitably will.”

“Mutualism. True mutualism.”

“I have no money to bribe you with. Even though it’s increasing now, of course, I have to use Harry’s vault for Harry’s expenses.”

Malfoy nodded absently, turning the teacup around in his long, fine fingers. Dolores studied his nails as carefully as she could without giving herself away. She would have to have hers done soon, and she thought that his style would suit her better than some witches’.

“I find myself more interested in young Mr. Potter’s previous life than I thought,” Malfoy said abruptly. “The truth, now, and not what you told the Wizengamot with such skill.” This time, when Dolores inclined her head, it was to acknowledge the compliment. “Has he really never had any friends before this?”

“That is what he told me.”

“Young children sometimes exaggerate.”

_And I’m sure you punish your son for it when he does._ He looked the type, the type that truly _understood_ the need to break children to harness. “I think that he is telling the truth. He’s told me about the Muggles. He had a Muggle cousin who would ensure that none of the children at their shared school wanted to play with Harry. I believe the word they used was ‘freak.’”

Malfoy’s face acquired a sheen that puzzled Dolores until he spoke again. “Then he is pure. Truly pure.”

_A weakness. Can he be that obsessed with purity?_ Dolores thought pure-bloods were best too, of course, and their way of life the only one that mattered, but she also knew to keep an eye on Muggleborns and half-bloods because they could be dangerous upstarts. Those who thought _only_ purity of blood mattered were too inclined to dismiss their opponents’ skills with wands, under the notion that they would be poor wizards anyway.

Any weakness in an enemy was an advantage, or at least a possible one. Dolores had learned that lesson well, and now she was trying to teach Harry the same thing. It would be remiss of her to ignore it when she was arranging matters with Malfoy.

“He is,” was all that she said for now, lowering her cup to the table and casting her eyes down. The more harmless she appeared, the more it might help, especially if Malfoy was inclined to underestimate her because of her blood status. “He longs to know about our world, the world that should have been his since birth. And he hates Albus Dumbledore.”

“A hatred that I am sure you have been doing all you can to encourage.”

“Of course. But it needs so little encouragement to flourish. Once he found out that different arrangements should have been made for him, that the Ministry should have been in charge of placing him once his godfather was found guilty if anyone should have, then Dumbledore had _earned_ his hatred.”

Malfoy chuckled, low and pleased. “And you think that no challenges to your custody will succeed?”

“Not on Dumbledore’s behalf, certainly. If he decides he can trust a Death Eater and frees Black, then we might face a more severe one. But at least for the moment, Harry has no desire to leave me.”

Malfoy leaned slowly back, one finger tapping the edge of his saucer. “I find you more and more interesting, Madam Umbridge.”

Dolores simply nodded, and never looked away from Malfoy once. She knew the pricklings of Legilimency; Ministry employees at her level were trained to recognize it, although not to wield it. She felt none now, and meeting someone’s eyes like this was a good way to convince them you were honest and on their side. She had used it with Harry more than once.

“Of course, you could be in charge of shaping the Boy-Who-Lived any way you want. You could make him into someone who worships Albus Dumbledore. You could teach him the rules of the Ministry and prepare him for a political career. You could make him into—a pure-blood wizard.”

The slight shake in Malfoy’s last words was that of reverence. Dolores made her decision. _He does value purity above everything else, and that is dangerous._

“I could be in charge of that,” she said, and humbly enough that Malfoy had to pay attention to her. “But I would hesitate to do it by myself. I haven’t had enough experience with those ideals and knowing the various forms they can take.” She bowed her head until she felt as if she had something on her neck, and then looked appealingly up at Malfoy, who was staring at her with his mouth slightly open. “Would you help me?”

It was a test, of sorts. If he would underestimate her, then she would have to look beyond him. If he raised his eyebrows in a certain way, then she would straighten up and acknowledge that she was laying it on a bit thick.

But he did neither. He only gave a thin smile and said, “I have done a good enough job with my son on extraordinary occasions, but it’s my wife who handles his day-to-day education. You should speak to her.”

Dolores nodded obediently, resigned to the fact that she would have to wait to judge if Malfoy was dangerously obsessed with purity, and stood up. “Then should we go and see how the boys are doing, sir?”

*

“You can use magic whenever you want, here. That’s the great thing about it.”

Dolores paused in the shadow of the playroom’s door. She had thought only to show Lucius Malfoy that Harry could be trusted around his son, but they had come in time to witness something much more interesting.

Potter was sitting with his knees drawn up in the middle of the floor, staring at the stack of round balls that were magically primed to stick together. Draco added another ball to the top and shook his head at Potter.

“Why won’t you use magic? I know you have to have some. No one who wasn’t a powerful wizard could defeat the Dark Lord.”

Potter’s head sank further down. Dolores ignored the way she was sure Malfoy was sneering beside her now, focusing more on the boy. There was something she wanted to see. It might happen, it might not, and yet she found herself holding her breath in the way she only usually did before a promotion at the Ministry.

Potter lifted his head, exhaled a little, and said it.

“Underage wizards aren’t allowed to use magic. I know that. And I don’t have a wand yet, and I’m trying to get my accidental magic under control. It was accidental magic that made my relatives the angriest. Miss Dolores knows I have magic. She wants me to know how to _wield_ it.”

Beside Dolores, Malfoy had gone still, in a way that might indicate any number of things. Dolores didn’t allow herself to dwell on them. The important part was that Harry had _said it_. And proven his loyalty to her in the same moment.

She would talk to Narcissa Malfoy, yes. And Mr. Malfoy. And she would allow Draco to continue visiting Harry, since he was exactly the right kind of friend for Harry to have. But the most important thing she must do was maintain her ascendancy over Harry’s mind.

“Harry is right,” she said, just as she saw Draco opening his mouth to say something else. The boy jerked guiltily, and the ball in his hand fell into the rest of them without being placed there, disrupting the neat tower he’d been building and sending the others rolling all over the floor.

Dolores advanced into the room and nodded with a smile to Potter, whose eyes were fastened on her. “You learned the lesson correctly, Harry,” she said. “The Ministry restricts the abilities of underage wizards for a reason. Wands are only for adults, and children can’t judge the proper time to use a curse.”

She turned to Draco, whose mouth had puckered up as if that was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. _Time to say something to pacify him_. “But on the other hand, young Mr. Malfoy is also right. You can practice magic in a house with adult wizards in it. They can supervise you, reverse unwanted side-effects, and register their own magic with the Ministry to cover the traces of yours.”

Draco smiled, unattractively smug. Dolores preferred the way Harry blinked and swallowed, and then asked, “But what happens to children who have to live with Muggles?”

“Accidental magic does not register with the Ministry,” Dolores had to admit, somewhat stiffly. That was something she wanted changed, and she had looked into the numerous attempts to develop a charm that would detect that kind of magic, but so far without success. It was simply too similar to a number of other effects, including the mere presence of creatures like giants and goblins—and the goblins who worked in Gringotts, their best chance to study the effect, refused to permit any wizards that closely into their sanctums. It was annoying. “But wand use does. Muggleborn children cannot use their wands at home during the summers or holidays.”

“So they couldn’t protect themselves if their Muggle relatives decided to do something to them.”

Aware of the two Malfoys, but more concerned with the problem in front of her, Dolores placed a hand on Harry’s shoulder. He flinched a little. Inwardly, she frowned. She would have to find some other punishment than pinching him there if he had started to anticipate it all the time. “They cannot. But _you_ don’t have to worry about that ever again, Harry. You won’t be leaving the wizarding world now.”

Harry gave another little flinch. Dolores looked down, and studied the way his hair stuck up. “You have an objection to present?”

“I just—what happens if I want to go back and punish the Dursleys?”

Dolores raised her eyebrows. It was the first time Potter had shown much interest in revenge, and she had thought she would have to train the instinct into him if political matters required it. But this was more interesting. She reached out and gripped his chin, tilting his head up. Potter let her do it, and at this moment, the Malfoys watched silently, making no motion to interfere.

Potter looked at her, and there was a shrinking in his eyes and his shoulders. He expected punishment for the question.

But he had asked it anyway.

Dolores gave a small nod. Good. That showed some leadership qualities, an excellent thing if he did not get above himself. And while a boy who looked fearful of his own shadow was politically useful now, questions would bubble to the surface in more than one mind if he was always that way.

She knelt down and hugged him, and Harry stiffened in surprise. Dolores let herself smell his hair—a different scent than young Malfoy’s polished, clean one—and nestle it against her cheek as she whispered, “An excellent question, Harry. But you’re still speaking as if you’d have to act alone. You do not. Adult wizards will take care of them for you, and punish them in an appropriate, _legal_ manner.”

From the way Harry huffed out, he truly had never considered that. Dolores narrowed her eyes. She had emphasized his importance as the Boy-Who-Lived more than once, she was certain of that. Was he too diffident because she had also been forced to show him who was in charge? That was not the effect she had intended to produce.

“Okay,” he whispered.

Despite the way that he had stopped calling her Miss Dolores in this recent conversation, Dolores nodded and let him go with a little pat on the head. She straightened to find Malfoy watching her with a kind of covert respect.

“Perhaps you will not need so much help from my wife after all,” he said. “But she would still _like_ to offer it.” He bent down then. “Say good-bye to your friend, Draco. We need to leave now.”

Watching Harry’s shy smile as he responded to Draco’s farewell and the way Draco practically basked in it, Dolores made new plans. Malfoy could still be dangerous, silly obsessions or not. And Harry could be enchanting when he acted shy. It was Dolores’s responsibility to balance that with his needed leadership qualities, and she would have to start doling out some more rewards, perhaps.

But Harry was going to be more than a dagger in her hand, the way she had sometimes imagined him. 

He was going to be a shining sword.


	7. A Little Soiree

“Madam Umbridge. I’ve heard all about you.”

“Only powerful things, I hope,” said Dolores, and contented herself with a small bow, since Narcissa Malfoy was holding her hand out to her instead of using both of them to clutch at her robes. 

“Yes,” said Narcissa, with a thoughtful glance that proved she heard all the low speculation that muttered in the back of Dolores’s mind. She turned and let her robes fall swirling about her, draping gracefully over her feet and the floor of Dolores’s drawing room. “And this must be Harry.”

_If they want to be on a first-name basis with him, they can,_ Dolores thought, and put her hand on Potter’s shoulder as she had when Lucius confronted them. “Yes. Say hello, Harry.”

“Hello, Mrs. Malfoy.” Harry was blinking a little, as if the light in the room was too bright with him. “You’re _really_ pretty. Draco said you were, but I thought he must be exaggerating.”

Dolores could feel herself turning as pink as the robes she wasn’t wearing right now, but Narcissa laughed, a gentle, delighted sound. “It’s been a long time since someone gave me a compliment like that, Harry,” she said, holding out her hand to him, too. “And the best thing is, I know you mean it.” She smiled at Dolores. “What a little charmer he is.”

Dolores managed to nod, although she thought Harry embarrassing and not charming. She was glad that she hadn’t reached out to pinch his shoulder for that mistake. She inclined her head and murmured, “Mrs. Malfoy has come to teach you some lessons, Harry.”

“Oh.” 

“I can quite understand that lessons might not be what you want, Harry,” Narcissa said smoothly, and sat down on the chair nearest him, arranging her robes to fall around her as gracefully as a cataract. “But it’s what you _need_. If you spent time all day playing, could you grow up to be a wizard who understood the power of his name?”

Dolores relaxed back into her chair. Narcissa understood the way she wanted to raise Harry, then. As long as she didn’t try to claim all the credit or power for herself…

Narcissa met her eyes for a second, and inclined her head. They understood each other perfectly, which meant Dolores didn’t need to interfere as Harry shook his head so hard that his messy fringe tumbled into his eyes.

“No, Mrs. Malfoy! That would mean Dumbledore might come and put me back with—the Muggles.”

His voice sank on the last words, and Dolores frowned. He needed to be able to name them without a tremor, especially now that knowledge of his childhood was common in the wizarding world. For him to have such an obvious point of weakness would end up with it being probed and used against him.

“He might try,” said Narcissa, looking as perfect and pale and lovely and unmoved as Dolores wished she could be. “And at the moment, he is making another move.” She looked at Dolores, but only to include her in the conversation, Dolores thought. Her eyes, so faint a color it was hard to tell whether they were blue or grey, never really left Harry. “He is releasing your godfather from prison.”

“I thought he—killed people.”

_The one good thing about him being this timorous is that he will not be Sorted into Gryffindor,_ Dolores thought in exasperation.

“Dumbledore appears to believe that he is innocent. He might try to take you away, if Dumbledore can prove his innocence. Do you want that to happen?”

“No. I don’t—know him.” Harry glanced at Dolores, and then away again. “I don’t think he would teach me about the wizarding world.”

“He would teach you many very strange things, things that wouldn’t agree with you or help your future at all.” Narcissa leaned forwards and rested her chin on her hand, her eyes never fading or moving. “You see, I know Sirius Black. He was my acknowledged cousin before he was disowned when he was sixteen.”

“Disowned? Why would he want to leave his family?”

_He still longs for a family, then._ Dolores was not sure whether that was something she should try to train out of him or not. On the one hand, Harry had such a powerful yearning in that direction that it might be advisable to work with the grain of the wood rather than warp it.

On the other hand, Dolores was not sure she could ever be a mother.

“He didn’t want to, I think.” Once again, Narcissa shook her head in a way that made his hair look like a waterfall. “But he had to. He wanted to change his family to fit _him_. He was the first Black ever Sorted into Gryffindor. The rest of us were Slytherins. He thought that meant he was better than us—purer, lighter, more _good_ —and he went around proclaiming in a loud voice that we should abandon the Dark Arts and join him. His parents couldn’t put up with that, of course. So they disowned him.”

“I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to live with someone like that. Someone who couldn’t even understand—does he think Muggles are good, Mrs. Malfoy?”

“Some of them,” said Narcissa, and gave him a smile that made Dolores watch her carefully. She would stand for many things in the teaching of these lessons, but not Narcissa stealing Harry’s affections away from her. “That was what made his crime so surprising. He killed a dozen Muggles while also trying to kill his best friend.”

“Best friend?”

“Well, perhaps I am exaggerating a little. I believe your father was his best friend. But they had two others. Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew. It was Pettigrew he killed. Or perhaps didn’t kill.”

Harry looked painfully bewildered. Dolores nodded a little. She suspected the pace of the teaching had gone too fast for him, and since Harry still didn’t know much about the wizarding justice system other than what Azkaban was and that the Wizengamot presided over trials, this wasn’t going well for him. “Harry,” she called.

He looked at her, blinking a little. Dolores stood up and came over to him, patting his shoulder. “Listen to Mrs. Malfoy, dear. When she’s done speaking, then you can ask any questions you still have.”

“Of course, Harry,” Narcissa said, her voice confection-sweet. “I should have realized this sudden flow of information would puzzle you. Believe me, I _want_ you to ask questions. I would like to teach you about the wizarding world and the heritage that always should have been yours.”

Dolores saw the way Harry’s jaw hardened, and went back to sit down, well-content. Harry didn’t like people condescending to him. It was one reason Dolores wanted to train manners into him. They _would_ always condescend to him as long as he acted like a child.

But for now, Harry only focused on Narcissa and said, “Please continue, Mrs. Malfoy.”

“Your parents were hidden under a powerful spell called the Fidelius Charm. Only the Secret-Keeper could reveal the location of the cottage where they lived, once the spell was cast. And Black was both that Secret-Keeper, and a secret Death Eater.”

“I remember Miss Dolores telling me about that.”

Narcissa nodded. “It seems as though your parents might have chosen a different Secret-Keeper, who might have been Pettigrew himself. Of course, then it becomes a question of whether Black is guilty of murder and betraying your parents, or only the first crime.”

“I hope they find him guilty,” said Harry, as solemn as a soldier. “I don’t want to leave Miss Dolores.”

“Not even to live with a man who knew your parents?”

“He’s been in Azkaban, though. Miss Dolores told me what happens to people in Azkaban. And my parents—the only thing I remember of my parents is my mum screaming and You-Know-Who casting the Killing Curse at her.”

Dolores put down her arms harder on the chair than she meant to, but she had to stare. Harry had told her _nothing_ of this. How was she to respond and look like a good guardian when she had to sit there gape-mouthed?

“How do you know that’s what you remember, Harry?” Narcissa, meanwhile, was as calm as a judge, and even leaning forwards to urge Harry to continue. Dolores decided the best thing to do was repair her dignity and see what she could salvage from the situation later.

“I didn’t for a long time, Mrs. Malfoy. But then I learned about the way my parents died from the history books Miss Dolores gave me. The Killing Curse is green, and I’ve always dreamed about a green light and a woman screaming and a man laughing. His laughter is—it’s high and cold and he sounds insane.”

Dolores relaxed a little. At least that made it sound as though Harry had simply failed to trust her with something precious and private to him because he had come into her care so recently, not as if she had been missing obvious signs of trauma.

“I see.” Narcissa sat back and gave Dolores a single quick glance, as if she didn’t know for sure whether to believe Harry but also saw no reason to _dis_ believe him. “But that doesn’t make you more eager to remember your parents?”

Harry was silent for a long time, playing with a thread that had frayed off the cuff of his sleeve. Dolores frowned at him, and wondered how long that had been there, and whether he picked at his clothes. It might be time for a Stinging Hex across the knuckles if he did.

“He can’t give me the memories,” Harry finally whispered. “All he can tell me is things _he_ knows about them. And—and the newspaper articles all said that he was my _dad’s_ best friend. I don’t know how much he could tell me about my mum.” He looked up and turned to Dolores first. “Maybe it’s being ungrateful. I don’t want to be ungrateful.”

Dolores nodded. That was one of the first lessons she had taught him. 

“But I don’t want secondhand memories. I want the real thing. And I think right now, the only person who’s going to give me the real thing and teach me the real history is Miss Dolores.”

Narcissa stood and smiled, smoothing down her robes. “My husband was wondering what you would say about knowing your godfather was freed, Mr. Potter. I will be happy to report to him how he should vote in the Wizengamot when this matter comes before him.”

“I mean, I think he should be free if he’s innocent,” Harry said, his eyes huge behind his glasses. “But I don’t want to see him.”

“How interesting,” said Narcissa, and her eyebrows arched a little higher. “I shall tell my husband that as well.” She turned, with only a small nod to Dolores, and walked out of the room.

Dolores accompanied her, giving Harry a sharp look on the way past. Harry nodded. He would understand and obey the order to stay in that particular drawing room until she returned.

Dolores was again grateful that the boy was as intelligent as he was. Being reared by Muggles could have warped him to the point that he was unwilling to use his brain at all.

“You have taught him commendable loyalty to you, Dolores,” said Narcissa, and paused in the doorway that would lead her outside. She preferred to Apparate rather than Floo even though she had Flooed in, Dolores noticed, and stored that information in her head in case it should prove useful later. “But you might want to consider that loyalty to you is not loyalty to all pure-blood ways and families.”

_I don’t want him to be loyal to all of them,_ Dolores could have said, but she only lowered her eyes and whispered, “Oh?”

“Yes. For example, if he thinks of you as a parent, he might not want to do things that would be in his best interest when it came to the Wizengamot.”

“I see. I shall keep that in mind, Mrs. Malfoy.”

When Narcissa had departed, Dolores went thoughtfully back into the drawing room. Harry stood with his hands clasped in front of him and stared down at his fingers. Dolores took the chair Narcissa had been sitting in and asked, “What did you think of Narcissa, Harry?”

“She’s pretty.”

Dolores nodded patiently, and waited. That pure-bloods used beauty like that as a weapon wasn’t something she would attempt to explain to Harry right now. “But did you like her?”

“No.”

Dolores leaned slowly back in the chair. She had hoped to elicit a response like that eventually, but she hadn’t expected it right away. “Why not?”

“I don’t think she liked me. I think—she was just concerned about what I thought of Black, and her husband, and maybe Draco. At first I thought she liked me, but then she was cold, like Aunt Petunia.”

Dolores’s lips twitched in spite of herself, but she had to say, “It won’t do to compare a pure-blood witch like Mrs. Malfoy with a Muggle, Harry. You must not let anyone hear you say that.”

“Yes, Miss Dolores.” But Harry was hesitating, shrinking in front of her again with his head bowed, holding something back obviously enough that Dolores sighed a little as she spoke.

“What is it, Harry?”

“Is it all right for me to compare her to Aunt Petunia if no one _hears_ me?”

Dolores paused. Then she knelt down in front of the boy and lifted his head. He was growing more talented at hiding his emotions and lying with his face, but his eyes still and always gave him away.

Harry looked at her with almost blank eyes for the first time, though. His face was smooth and so guileless that Dolores would have believed in the innocent nature of the question if not for the things she had said to Harry, and the things she was trying to teach him.

“You must remember one thing, Harry. As you navigate the world of politics, and you learn how to use the power of your name the way I’m teaching you to do, and you make friends…”

“Yes, Miss Dolores?”

“Your first loyalty will always be to _me_ , or I will make sure that you wish it had been.”

As she spoke, she pinched his shoulder again, but this time Harry only looked her in the eye and nodded once. He was growing resistant to pain, Dolores thought, or perhaps she couldn’t surprise him with that now, so it had lost its sting.

_Hmmm. Perhaps I need to implement those other tactics I was thinking of._

“One reason you need to be careful,” Dolores said, and modulated her voice as she stood up, “is that some people will seek to use you. The Malfoys can be powerful allies, but they might do the same thing as Dumbledore. See your power and your name, and decide that they can manipulate you for it.”

Harry looked up at her. “How can I keep them from doing that and still be friends with Draco?”

“Well,” said Dolores slowly, as if it was only just occurring to her, “you might talk to Draco, sometimes, when he’s here. See if he knows all the politics that his parents take part in. I don’t think he does. Some of it might surprise him.”

“Why wouldn’t his parents tell him, though? You tell me, Miss Dolores.”

“You remember I told you that you can become powerful by keeping people in ignorance, the way Dumbledore does?” Dolores waited until Harry nodded. “I think that Lucius Malfoy would prefer that Draco not think about power right now. And not telling him all the correct details about history or legislation is one way to do that.”

“Oh.” Harry stared at his hands again, and Dolores waited. She was sure she knew what his next question would be. And she was right. “Why wouldn’t Mr. Malfoy want Draco to know about politics, though?”

“Because sometimes sons can be challenges to their parents. Troubles. Trials. You know, Harry. The kind of trouble I told you never to be.”

“No, Miss Dolores!”

_At least those words still properly terrify him._ Dolores took a moment to revel in her triumph, before she continued. “I don’t think the Malfoys will _hurt_ you, Harry. Mr. Malfoy likes you better than his wife, I think. But they might seek to use you in ways that you don’t want to be used. So you need to be cautious around them, the same way you are around Dumbledore. And talk to Draco when he’s here. Find out what he knows and doesn’t know. Then report back to me.”

Harry went still. “You want me to…spy on him, Miss Dolores?”

“Only tell me the truth.”

For a moment, Harry seemed to be struggling with the notion, even given the way she had phrased it, and Dolores thought she knew why. His disgusting Muggle aunt would have spied on her neighbors, Dolores was certain. 

But she kept eye contact, and Harry finally nodded. “It would be good to know what Draco knows,” he said, in a soft voice.

Dolores smiled. “We’ll make a politician of you yet, Harry.”

And here she could trace her progress. A month ago, Harry would have flinched at what she said, and maybe curled up so that he could bury his head in his arms and shudder. He had dreaded using his name at all when he found out it might make people notice him, and oppose him.

Now, he beamed up at her for the compliment.

A better politician than most, even.


	8. The Wrestling Place

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eight—The Wrestling Place_

Dolores had cast spells years ago that would alert her the instant anything changed in her home. That included a door opening outside, someone knocking, or even an animal entering her garden and nibbling on her plants. If the disturbance was a small one, she could roll over and go back to sleep immediately. Sleeping easily had always been a gift of hers, as it was of everyone who had a clean conscience.

This time, she was jerked awake as though someone had grabbed her shoulder, and she understood when she listened to the jabbing of the alarm in her ears.

Someone had Flooed into the main drawing room, the one where she and Harry had met Narcissa three days ago.

All the Floo connections were closed.

Dolores rolled to her feet and grabbed her wand. Then she paused to make sure that there was nothing indecorous about her pink dressing gown. There was a tiny possibility, smaller than the rabbit currently struggling in one of her traps outside, that this might be the Minister or another ally, and she didn’t want to look disheveled in front of them.

But she didn’t really think it was.

Dolores came out near the top of the stairs and paused in unpleasant surprise when she saw Harry peering from his open door. “Go back into your room, Harry,” she whispered. “There are intruders, but I’ll take care of it.”

“Sorry, Miss Dolores, I couldn’t sleep,” said Harry, and shivered. “I never can when there’s any noise in the darkness. Dudley liked to creep downstairs sometimes and try to drag me out of the cupboard if I was sleeping.”

While that was interesting, Dolores didn’t want to discuss it when she might be about to begin a battle. “Go back into your room, Harry. Bolt the door. When you do, you’ll see some sparkling white stars appear on the hinges. They’ll protect you unless you unbolt the door from the inside. Don’t do that unless you hear me say…” She thought for a minute. “I want to free the rabbit. Okay?”

“Can people imitate your voice?”

“There are spells that can do that,” said Dolores, as soothingly as she could when she heard more than one pair of boots trampling on the carpet downstairs. “That’s why I gave you the phrase. You have to hear me say _that_ , all right? Not just my voice telling you to open the door.”

Harry finally nodded and went back into his room. Dolores listened, despite the compulsion to dash away, and heard the faint snap of the bolt just a moment before harsh white light began to play around the door. She nodded and crept down the stairs, casting a Disillusionment Charm when she was near the bottom step.

There was only silence as she made her way as quietly as she could towards the drawing room door, which was puzzling and frightening. But then Dolores remembered she’d left the door mostly shut earlier that day.

Sure enough, when she leaned her ear to the gap, she could hear the low voices talking to each other.

“Are you really sure that Harry’s going to want to see me, Albus?”

“You are a connection to his parents, Sirius. And I do think that we recognize some people who were around us in our earliest childhood even when we don’t know we recognize them. The moment Harry sees you, he’ll feel that sense of familiarity in his bones. I’m sure of it.”

“Well—I suppose that’s true.”

Dolores sneered a little. If one of the _rumors_ about Black’s relationship with his family was true, she could understand the reason for his doubt.

Several plans ran through her mind, but she chose the best one when she heard the footsteps moving towards the door. She didn’t have much time. And ultimately, looking like a fool wasn’t desirable if, say, she had to share this memory in a Pensieve in front of the Wizengamot.

She stepped back, canceled the Disillusionment Charm, and put away her wand. She made sure that she was waiting with her hands folded in front of her and a faint, inquiring frown on her face when they came out of the drawing room.

Black leaped into the air. He looked starved, and he was dirty in a way that made Dolores’s skin crawl. But still, she stood still and let her skin crawl while she casually examined him. 

He was also pale, and dark-eyed, and dark-haired, and even if his hair was scraggly and hanging around his face at the moment, Dolores could see that he had once been handsome, and what many of her acquaintance would call a classic pure-blood. So she let a faint smile pass over her lips. “Mr. Black. Are you here to talk to Harry?”

Dumbledore opened his mouth, then closed it again. Maybe he thought it was better to let Black handle this. In any case, Black was already talking. “Yes. Yes, I want to see him. James and Lily—they left him to me. I’m his godfather. I want to see him. I want to know he’s safe.”

_Azkaban didn’t leave him unscathed._ There was no way that Dolores would leave him unsupervised with Harry. But she only nodded and then said, “It’s the middle of the night. I think Harry would be better able to see you in the morning. Growing boys need their sleep, you know.”

Black’s eyes darted back and forth between her and Dumbledore. Dolores bristled, but waited. She didn’t _know_ for certain that Dumbledore’s plan had been to come here and steal Harry away in the middle of the night. Given the precarious political position he was in right now, that would really be the height of stupidity for him to do.

Especially since suspicion would fall on him immediately. He could hardly pretend Black had broken out of Azkaban on his own and stolen Harry.

“I want to see him _now_ ,” Black said, and there was a hint of a growl in his voice.

“Even if you frighten him? That would hardly make him wish to associate with you more.”

Black looked utterly confounded. Dolores sniffed a little. Dumbledore hadn't prepared him at _all_ , had he? He had probably plucked Black from prison the moment an investigation said he could--or a bit before--and brought him here.

_That's why they planned to sneak in at night, of course. Because they knew they could convince a frightened, sleepy boy far better than they could convince me._

"I think we should wait for the morning," said Dolores, in the softest, steadiest voice she could manage. "That way, Harry can see you in the light of day and think about you as his godfather, not someone creeping his way into the house at night. And that way, you can explain more fully why you're here. Certainly not to take him away from the only wizarding home he's ever known."

"Wizarding home?"

"Why, yes. He was being raised by Muggles, Mr. Black. Lily Evans's sister and her husband. Did Mr. Dumbledore not explain that to you?"

Dolores, at least, was absolutely certain that couldn't be the case, that Dumbledore would have had to say _something_ to explain why Harry was with Dolores and why it was so imperative for Dumbledore's cause that they get him away. But that didn't mean Black remembered it.

Black reacted even better than she'd hoped. He spun around and pointed a finger at Dumbledore in the way he would have pointed a wand if he had one. "Tuney Evans? You left him with _Tuney Evans?_ "

"Yes," said Dolores, amused. If she ever met the Muggle woman again, she would have to call her that awful nickname, just to see what happened.

"I'm not talking to you," Black snapped over his shoulder, and faced Dumbledore. "I want an answer! What about Augusta Longbottom? What about Amelia Bones? What about any members of the Or--" He cut himself short and gave a wary look towards Dolores, which Dolores smiled blandly through. "I mean, just, you couldn't have found someone better for him?"

"Not without the risk of revealing where he was placed." Dumbledore stood straight-backed and sad-eyed, like a war general. "It was of the utmost importance to keep him concealed where Death Eaters could not reach him."

" _Was?_ Not now?"

_Black is a gift,_ Dolores decided quietly. He was questioning Dumbledore about all sorts of things that she never would have thought of, or dared to bring up. And Dumbledore actually looked ashamed and lost, perhaps because Black had been in prison for seven years for something he might not have done. 

It was a form of credit Dolores would never want to earn, but she didn't mind exploiting it now that it was available to her.

"Sirius," said Dumbledore, and sighed. "I did what I thought was best. I didn't have you available to consult with me, or James, or Lily. And then I thought Peter had been killed unjustly--"

"Now you know he wasn't."

"Now. But not then, Sirius." Dumbledore stretched forwards his hands, as if he would take Black's or even embrace him. "Now, of course, you can make the best decisions for Harry. But at the time, all I had were my instincts. And my instincts said that it would be dangerous for him to grow up in the wizarding world."

"I do wonder one thing," Dolores interjected, her voice bright. "Why not have a Squib take care of him? Then he could have grown up in the Muggle world, but with someone who would cherish him and teach him about his birthright."

"No Squib could have protections placed around their house as powerful as the blood-based ones around the Dursleys'."

"Blood-based protections mean there has to be love!" Black howled, and looked as if he was peering out of the center of a whirlwind, his hair swinging around him as he thrust a finger at Dumbledore. "There's no love here! Never was, between Petunia and Lily, the entire time I knew them! You fool!"

Dumbledore was finally starting to look a little irritated, and Dolores thought it in her best interests to speak again. "It does seem as though there was little love between Harry and his aunt. I saw her using him as a servant in a shop."

" _See_?" Black snapped at Dumbledore, in such disgust that Dolores did have to bite her lip to keep from giggling. "I told you. It didn't work. It wouldn't work. I don't know why you ever thought it would work in the first place."

"Miss Umbridge is not telling you the whole truth, Sirius. I don't intend to restore Harry to the Dursleys. I planned to have you take care of him."

"Who gave you the right?"

Black was peering at Dumbledore from one eye and then another, as if his mane of hair was a shaggy bush, and Dolores thought she could intervene again. "You do have some legal rights as Harry's godfather, Mr. Black. Did the Headmaster tell you that was why he got you out of prison?"

Black laughed, a kind of horrid cackling sound that Dolores had to admit she would appreciate more without the smile that followed it. "I assume he wanted me to appeal to Harry. To take him away from you and show him why he should be--I don't know, with a family on the side of Light?"

Dolores gave a smooth shrug of her shoulders. "I have never set myself against the Light as Headmaster Dumbledore represents it."

"I don't even know if he would let Harry stay with me," Black mumbled, turning and showing dog-like teeth at Dumbledore. "Or if I was just going to be a waystation. Hell, maybe he was going to take Harry away after it was all nice and legal for a few months and raise him himself."

"I am too busy to take care of a child, Sirius." Dumbledore looked genuinely pained, but then, he could make almost anything look genuine, Dolores thought spitefully. "I would not take him from you. I want Harry reunited with his godfather."

"The way you wanted him reunited with Lily's family?"

"This is not--I never knew they were abusive, Sirius. I only thought that he would be safe there."

"You _never checked on him to make sure he was!_ I was in Azkaban, I couldn't! What's _your_ excuse?"

Dolores broke in politely. In truth, she would have liked the fight to go on longer, but she thought Dumbledore would recover at some point, and they needed to move on. "Would you like to rest now, Mr. Black? Then you can stay here and see Harry in the morning, as I suggested. Over breakfast?"

"You have no legal right to withhold custody from us, Miss Umbridge."

"You don't have bloody custody of him, Albus! I do! Why do you keep talking about 'we' and 'us' as if you have a right to determine what happens to _my_ godson?"

Black spun around, and Dolores did her best to keep from flinching. She didn’t like the way he jabbed his finger into her face, even if he was trying to make a point that would be the opposite of Dumbledore’s. But she stood there and bore it meekly, and Black didn’t seem to notice she was bearing it.

_Then again, it would be hard to notice nuances that subtle after so long in Azkaban._

“I want to see Harry in the morning. No more excuses. No more shoving me away and pretending it was for the greater good that I was locked up.”

“I would never pretend that, Mr. Black,” said Dolores with perfect truth. She would never use the language, which sounded more like the kind of thing that Dumbledore often inflicted on the Wizengamot than anything else. “If you’ll come upstairs? I have a guest room that’s already furnished and has the bed made.” She’d furnished more than one room for Harry, curious how he would respond to the abundance of choices, and it would only be a matter of casting the Freshening Charm on the sheets.

“You cannot do this, Madam Umbridge.”

_Does he always get more respectful when he’s trying to get around someone?_ Dolores turned back to Dumbledore and nodded to him a little. “Headmaster, you are currently an intruder in our home. I must ask that you leave.”

“Sirius can hardly be said to share the house with you, madam.”

“I was referring to Harry.”

“She’s looking pretty good compared to you, Albus,” Black snarled, and stalked upstairs. Dolores shook her head a little as she watched him go. On the one hand, she had always heard that Black was under Dumbledore’s dominion after he abandoned his family. It was the only explanation any rational pure-blood could come up with to account for why he’d never tried to reconcile with them.

On the other hand, it seemed that Dumbledore had invested his hopes in a cracked and volatile mind, and it should be no surprise to him that he was disappointed.

“The Ministry has granted custody of Harry to me.”

“You would only seek to _use_ him.”

Black laughed from the stairs. “Pretty bloody rich, coming from you, Dumbledore! Pretty bloody rich.” He went on walking, his footsteps striking the stairs with such precision that he sounded like the windup Muggle toys Dolores had seen Mudbloods playing with. Harry might be frightened, hearing such sounds coming towards his door. She would have to go up soon and reassure him.

Dumbledore cleared his throat. “I think you’ll find, Madam Umbridge, that the Ministry can revoke custody as easily as they give it.”

“Threats, Albus?” Apparently Black could still hear even though he was far enough up the staircase that Dolores could no longer see him. “How _like_ you. I hope you’ll remember that I can give testimony in my own right, now. Just because I’m not going to be your obedient little puppet doesn’t mean you can pack me back off to Azkaban.”

Dumbledore closed his eyes in what looked like exhaustion. “You’re insisting on ending this on a bad note,” he told Dolores, in clipped tones that she thought rather strikingly rude. She wouldn’t have tolerated that from Harry. “It doesn’t have to. We could discuss my plans for Harry, and then you would see their reasonableness.”

Dolores gave him another polite smile and shook her head. “We’ll have interesting discussions about legality if you stay here another second, Headmaster.”

Dumbledore waited a few seconds more, as if he thought she might change her mind, or Black might, or Harry might come flying down the stairs and ask for his forgiveness. Then he murmured, “You are mistaking a mistake,” and departed through the Floo. Dolores raised the protections on it again immediately, for what good it would do. She would see about stronger ones in the morning.

Then she went to make sure Black was settled, and to release Harry from his room.

*

To Harry’s soft, frightened questions, she replied that Black would be staying with them for a little while, and Harry would meet his godfather in the morning. She rejoiced in the way he grabbed her arm and said, “But you won’t let him leave with me?”

It was delicious that it was still a question at the end. Dolores bowed her head and said, “Of course not.” 

Harry nodded, and Dolores pushed him back towards the bed. Harry went, still looking back once before he climbed under the sheets.

Dolores went to bed, and dreamed of all the possibilities this visit had opened up before her. She didn’t think Dumbledore had _meant_ to give her more chances, but he had, and she was grateful. 

So should he be. After all, she would use this opportunity for the greater good.


	9. Arenas of the Mind

“Why did Dumbledore come into our home?”

Dolores spoke to Black, but she was keeping one eye on Harry. He had shown a disgusting tendency to gape at Black over breakfast that morning, letting his mouth hang open and half-chewed food show on his tongue. Only when Dolores gave him a few glares had he started chewing again. Even then, he kept peering and ducking his head whenever Black smiled at him.

Black barked out a laugh, and Dolores saw that his mouth was full, too. She sighed. She supposed she couldn’t reprimand _him_. “He thought you were a weak witch and you wouldn’t wake up until we had Harry. Then you would have a hell of a fight to get him back. He doesn’t think you’re powerful, just your allies.” He tilted his head to the side as if trying to estimate Dolores’s power with a glance. “But he might be wrong.”

Dolores gave him a frigid smile that could pass as polite. “But the Wizengamot and the Ministry awarded legal custody to me.”

“Possession is nine-tenths of the law,” Black said, and gulped some pumpkin juice. Dolores had had to send a house-elf to purchase it. However, if the man was that childish, it would only make it easier to control him. “He thought you could rage all you wanted, but no one on the Wizengamot would actually manage to take Harry away once he had him.”

“And he was going to use your claim to contest mine?”

“Yes. Because I was in Lily’s and James’s wills, of course.”

Black’s mouth turned down, and Dolores held back a sigh, hoping he wouldn’t turn out to be a sentimental fool. But he was staring so soulfully at Harry that she at least thought that he would be that way about the boy.

_He seems to have no sentiment left about Albus Dumbledore at all._

“And I was not.” Dolores patted her lips with a napkin, and turned to study Harry. He was once again letting his mouth hang open as he studied Black. “Harry, if you _would_.”

His gaze shifted to her, and he flinched. This time, Black was the one who frowned. “Hey. Are you treating the boy right?”

“Only to teach him manners. What his relatives thought of as manners was to starve him and scold him when he reached for food.”

As Dolores had thought would be the case, Black was easy to distract. His face darkened. “Albus _swore_ he would be safe there,” he muttered, and stabbed a piece of omelet with his fork. “I have no idea what he was thinking.”

“He was probably only thinking of Death Eaters and the like.”

“And people like you?” In one of those sudden changes of mood that Dolores knew were common to those who had come out of Azkaban, Black abruptly leaned towards her, clouds in his eyes and on his face. “People who would use him politically? He might have had a _point_.”

Dolores regarded him without much emotion, only watching Harry out of the corner of her eye. He was staring between them in dismay, but at least his mouth was closed this time. That pleased her.

“Dumbledore would use him politically far more than I would,” said Dolores softly. “I don’t think he ever actually intended to let you raise Harry, or even to give him to another member of the Wizengamot he felt comfortable with. Certainly not to raise him himself. I think he would have waited until the publicity died down a little, and then sent Harry straight back to his mother’s relatives.”

Harry shivered a little. Dolores strangled a smile. So the reminder of what could have happened worked on Harry even when she wasn’t speaking to him directly. That was good to know.

“But why?” Black’s hands curled, and his fingers scraped like claws down the edge of the dining table. Dolores remained calm. She would have an elf rub it out later. “What did the Muggles do for him that he’s so determined to give them the gift of raising Harry?”

Dolores inclined her head. “I’m glad to see that you think of raising Harry as a gift.”

“Of course I bloody well do!” Dolores did her best to look disapproving without opening her mouth, and Black flushed. “Sorry. For the language, I mean. But I’m not going to take the words back. Of course I would welcome the chance to raise him.”

He beamed at Harry, who smiled tentatively back. Dolores could see the attraction. Black had the link to Harry’s late parents, which she did not. And he seemed like someone who would offer a young child none of the needed discipline at all. At Harry’s age, staying up all night, every night, and eating literal tons of sweets would sound like paradise.

“Then you can help me,” said Dolores. There was no chance that she could get rid of Black quietly, and she might as well make political hay of his wrongful imprisonment and his family name that some people still respected. “Make sure that Harry stays here, and you can help me raise him.”

“You didn’t answer my question. Why do you think Albus would send him back to the Muggles?”

“Perhaps we shouldn’t discuss this in front of Harry.” Dolores let her gaze slide minutely sideways.

“No!” Harry said immediately, and then winced and touched his mouth before she could correct him. But he went on, although in a subdued tone and looking at her chin instead of her eyes. “Please let me stay, Miss Dolores. I want to know. And I can—I can take a lot more than you think I can. I’m tough, you know.”

“I would not hurt you unnecessarily, Harry.”

“Let the kid stay. If this is as bad as I think it’s going to be, then he’ll have to learn the truth sometime, and we can’t lie to him.”

Dolores tilted her head stiffly. In truth, she would have preferred to conduct the entire argument herself, but there were disadvantages as well as advantages to partnering with the notorious Sirius Black. “Perhaps you are right. I think that Albus Dumbledore desired to be Harry’s first contact with the wizarding world. Or at least, he wanted to it to happen on his watch. Someone he chose would have contacted Harry, and told him only as much about the wizarding world as Dumbledore wanted him to know.”

“But…there are all sorts of _books_ on Harry. He would have found out the truth once he started reading around more.”

“How much do all those books know about that night in Godric’s Hollow? Speculation, Mr. Black, only. But there is a way to present speculation with a slant, to make certain things sound black and white, right and good or wrong and evil.” She turned and looked at Harry. “What do you think you would have thought of, say, Slytherin House had you first heard the truth from Dumbledore’s people?”

Harry hesitated for a long moment. Then he said, “I wouldn’t have a good impression of it, Miss Dolores.”

“And would you have heard about magic before your eleventh birthday?” Dolores asked, moving swiftly on, since she could see Black opening his mouth, probably to give his own opinion on Slytherin House.

Harry shook his head roughly. “My relatives…they hated just the _word_ , Miss Dolores.”

“I thought so,” said Dolores, and tried unsuccessfully to think about what it would be like to grow up in a household that abhorred magic. Growing up with a Muggle mother and Squib sibling had been bad enough. “So, Mr. Black. Think that Albus Dumbledore is the epitome of all goodness and light?”

“I told you already that I didn’t think that anymore,” said Black, but his voice was rough and his face white. “I just…assume you’re right, for a second. _Why_?”

“Because that would mean he could completely control Harry’s access to people, knowledge, and perceptions, of course,” said Dolores, feigning shock. “He could make sure that Harry met what he thought were the ‘right’ people, the ones who would tell him that Albus Dumbledore is the center of the universe, and could always be trusted, and—”

“Instead, he’ll meet the people _you_ think are ‘right.’”

“That’s true,” said Dolores. “But those aren’t only the people on one side of the war, Mr. Black—”

“You’re introducing him to _Death Eaters_?” Black had leaped to his feet.

Dolores didn’t know how she resisted the urge to hex him for interrupting, she really didn’t. But although she pressed her lips together, she didn’t lose her temper. She was truly restrained, she thought, a model of propriety. “I’m introducing him to politically important people, Mr. Black.”

“That means Death Eaters. And members of the Wizengamot.”

“You speak as though he would be better off only knowing _one_ member of the Wizengamot.”

That made Black pause. As Dolroes had suspected, he had forgotten that Dumbledore was part of the Wizengamot, and a practitioner of the politics he so despised. He was thinking of Dumbledore solely in terms of the Headmaster of Hogwarts.

Dolores wished she knew how Dumbledore had accomplished that trick. It would be wonderful to be able to play two roles and make people forget all about one except when it was convenient for _her_.

“Well,” said Black uncertainly, “I’m sure that Albus would have guided him into politics at the appropriate time.”

“When would that be? He would have spent his summers in the Muggle world with the Dursleys still his guardians, and he would have been under Dumbledore’s control at the school. Isolated from the political world, incidentally. Dumbledore would have managed his access to news, and one of his arguments for putting Harry in the Muggle world was that he didn’t want him to get a swelled head. How much would he have _told_ him, in the name of preserving his innocence and keeping his fame from influencing him?”

Now Black looked a different shade of pale. “But Harry—he would have to _know_ , sooner or later. He would have to know how to manage it, with people coming up to him all the time and wanting to thank him.”

Dolores turned and looked at Harry. “How would you feel with people wanting to do that to you, Harry?”

Black looked guilty for forgetting the boy was in the room. Dolores ignored that. It would make a better weapon if she waited and used it when she needed it.

“I would hate it,” said Harry, and shuddered a little. “I hated it when people on the Dursleys’ street stared at me. They all hated me, because my aunt t-told them I was a horrible person and always causing trouble b-because I got into fights with other kids.”

Black looked ready to run right out and murder the Dursleys. Dolores was starting to understand how even Dumbledore could have believed he belonged in Azkaban for six years. “I’ll make them—”

“Regardless of what we might do to the Muggles in the future,” Dolores interrupted smoothly, “I think we can agree that Harry needs _some_ training in managing his fame before he goes to Hogwarts. Even if we think that Dumbledore had the most noble and admirable of motives, leaving Harry in the Muggle world until his eleventh birthday can be seen as political negligence.”

“Yes.” Black slumped into the chair. Dolores thought he was having more trouble giving up his faith in Dumbledore than he’d admit. “Well…then what can we do? I don’t want Harry to meet Death Eaters, either.”

“On the contrary,” said Dolores sharply, before Harry could bring up his budding friendship with Draco Malfoy and perhaps prejudice Black against the Malfoys’ visits. “He should meet the people who were his political opponents.”

“Why?”

“Harry is a wonderful person,” said Dolores, letting her voice sink a little as she looked at Harry. She didn’t like to praise people to their faces, but Harry wasn’t a Ministry official who would suspect that she was flattering him to advance her career if she was too open. “He can keep them from being political opponents in the future.”

Black blinked. Then he said, “I hated politics.”

“You still had a political side,” Dolores pointed out, her voice gently biting. “By fighting in the Order of the Phoenix under Dumbledore.”

“You _know_ about the Order?”

“It came out after the war,” said Dolores. “When Dumbledore testified that Severus Snape had been a member of it to get him out of spending time in Azkaban.”

“He testified for _Snivellus_ when he wouldn’t even speak up for _me_?”

The way Black spoke made Dolores remember his family’s reputation in the Dark Arts. She made sure her hand was next to her wand, under the table, as she answered, “Yes, he was a spy. And an accused Death Eater. I hope that you won’t suggest Harry avoid _him_ , unless you want him not to attend Hogwarts, since Snape works there as the Potions master.”

“I hate the thought of him. He was a bully in school! A thug! You don’t know the half of it! He wanted to kill some of my friends just because—”

“I agree that his reputation is not the best, even now,” Dolores said. She had found the path to use with Black, she thought. “But Harry will not be able to avoid him, so it’s best that he get some practice now. Think of it as preparing him to survive Snape.”

Black grabbed the bait, as she had hoped he would, nodding emphatically. “Of course! And you’re right, we can’t let Snivellus ruin his experience at Hogwarts!”

He ripped around to face Harry. “Hogwarts was the best experience of my life, Harry. You’ll have a good time there, too. I’ll make sure of it. We’ll show you all the ways to prank people, and that means…”

Dolores ceased to listen to the specific words as she watched them. What was important wasn’t the words. It was the light in Harry’s eyes as he listened to Black, and the way that one of his hands still gripped his fork.

And how he made sure that he kept his mouth shut when he chewed, and swallowed all the food in his mouth before he spoke.

Her lessons were holding.

Dolores had no objections to Black as an ally. It seemed that it would be rather easy to keep him, as long as she used a light hand on the reins. But she did want to make sure that Harry’s first loyalty was always to the woman who had taught him, first, about magic.

And that he would learn all the complexities of magic, all the nuances of his situation.

_He will not be in Gryffindor House if I have anything to say about it._

*

“I see,” said Narcissa Malfoy when Dolores had finished explaining the situation to her. “That is an unexpected complication.”

Her brow didn’t wrinkle as she thought about it. Dolores watched her with attentive envy. She still felt the temptation to lose her temper with Harry sometimes, and much more with Black in the house. She had found him on his way to Zonko’s, to buy some childish jokes, and it had taken a long argument to make him see why some books on history and magic from the Black library would be better gifts.

“In some circumstances, I would consider using the family connection with Sirius,” said Narcissa, bowing her head and strumming with her fingers as if she was playing an invisible instrument. “I am his cousin, you know, and almost the only one he has had recent contact with. Bellatrix was—too much on the opposite side of the war, and Andromeda hasn’t had communication with us in years.”

 _Her sisters,_ Dolores recalled, and felt foolish. She had known Narcissa Malfoy was a Black before her marriage, of course. It wasn’t the sort of knowledge that one who intended to climb high in the Ministry could be without. But she hadn’t thought of it in the context of this circumstance. She had simply thought of how resistant Black would be to letting Harry associate with the Malfoys.

“But he does not sound as if he would respond to that right now.” Narcissa sighed and focused on Dolores again. “I think Lucius shall call an emergency session of the Wizengamot.”

Dolores blinked. There had already been an emergency session to settle the matter of Harry’s custody, and by law and precedent, there couldn’t be another one on the same topic unless there was compelling legal reason. Dumbledore had probably intended to present Black’s innocence and greater right to custody of Harry as the reason.

“What will be the topic?” Dolores finally ventured, when Narcissa simply stayed silent and watched her as if she was a slow but promising pupil.

“Why,” said Narcissa, with a slow smile that took over most of her face, “it will be the face that there may be more half-blood wizarding children, _placed_ in the Muggle world, whose only or first contact with magic might come through the Headmaster of their school, rather than the proper Ministry authority.”

Dolores nodded deeply, as close to a bow as she would come now that she had the Boy-Who-Lived in her care. It was a pretext, of course. There were likely none other than Harry, or at least none that Dumbledore had personally placed. But there would be an investigation, and there would be a fuss, and there would be probing into Dumbledore’s motives for wanting the Boy-Who-Lived to grow up in a place only _he_ knew about and have contact with the wizarding world only under the aegis of _his_ school, and there would be proper punishment for having violated the sanctity of the Boy-Who-Lived’s home.

“Thank you for alerting us to this opportunity, Dolores,” Narcissa added carelessly, and then disappeared from the Floo.

 _Treating me like a student, still,_ Dolores thought, as she stood and swatted soot from her robes. _Well, that is just as well. Aloof, superior teachers don’t always pay attention to everything the student learns._

_Or how fast._


	10. Courtroom Duels

“You should make sure that you look presentable, Harry,” said Dolores, and slid her hands down his shoulders, watching the hang of his robes critically. He looked as though he wanted to say something, but he kept obligingly silent. Dolores smiled and patted his shoulder. “You see? Now you look like a respectable child who can appear in front of the Wizengamot and won’t shock them.”

“Why are you always dressing him in green?” asked Black from the door. “It’s a Slytherin color.”

Dolores didn’t say she had been a Slytherin, because that would only launch Black into a rant, and make them late. “Surely you must have seen how it brings out his eyes.” She turned Harry away from the mirror so that Black could see his face. “He has beautiful eyes.”

Harry squirmed under her hands. Dolores suspected he didn’t know how to take a compliment. Another lesson to teach him, before Narcissa could.

“Oh, I know,” said Black, and gave Harry the kind of doting smile that made Dolores sure she could eventually secure his loyalty, too, as long as Harry’s stayed with her. “So did Lily.” Then he snapped his gaze up to her. “But I don’t think you should go around calling them beautiful. He’s a _boy_.”

Dolores restrained her sigh. “He’s at the age where people don’t expect him to be strong and fearless all the time,” she explained. “They can see a beautiful child. He’s so young…”

“Yeah, he is,” Black whispered, and in one of those rapid transitions that still left Dolores blinking, he came sprinting across the floor and knelt in front of Harry with his hands on Harry’s shoulders and his eyes locked on his face. “Do you forgive me for dashing off to Azkaban, pup? And leaving you all alone with the Dursleys?”

Dolores just waited. She _saw_ Harry, as Black did not most of the time, but she didn’t know how he would respond to this. It would be interesting to find out.

Harry twisted his hands together, but then lowered them and clasped them before Dolores could even poke him in the back to make him do so. His voice was soft and steady as he said, “I forgive you, Sirius.”

Black crushed him so hard that Harry let out a small whimper. Dolores gently pulled him backwards again, and marked the way that Harry was holding onto the left side of his ribcage. Probably some old break there, which ached when someone held him too tightly. She would have to take him to the Healer at the end of the week—the emergency session of the Wizengamot could not last longer than that—and see about regrowing the bone.

And she would have to think of something special to do to the Muggles.

The problem was, nothing she thought of seemed special enough.

“What’s wrong, Dolores?”

Though Dolores still winced at the speaking of her name without a title, at least having another adult around meant she could share her thoughts a little. She flicked her eyes down to Harry, still tenderly rubbing his ribs, and then back up to Black and mouthed the word, “Muggles.”

Black’s lip peeled back from his teeth, and the insanity in his eyes grew. Dolores did her best not to show her shudder. At least she knew Black had the same thoughts as her, because for a moment, his eyes fixed on Harry as he walked ahead of them down the stairs.

“We’ll have to think of something special,” he whispered.

Dolores patted his shoulder as she passed him, taking the chance to smooth down his black formal robes the same way she had Harry’s. “We will.”

*

“Why, Lucius, have you called this special session of the Wizengamot?”

Dolores smiled through her teeth. Because the wheels of justice moved so slowly, Dumbledore still had the right to be here as a member of this august body, although not to preside. And he had immediately followed on the heels of Lucius Malfoy’s opening speech with _this_ question.

Lucius turned his head and gave Dumbledore a faint smile. “Why, Albus, to make _absolutely_ sure that the question of Harry Potter’s custody is settled. Since you thought it was urgent enough to break into Miss Umbridge’s house in the middle of the night, I thought you would agree it should be attended to as soon as possible.”

Laughter of varying degrees of politeness circled the room. Dumbledore didn’t flush, but only bent a slightly sad look on Lucius, and then on Harry, who stood next to Dolores. Black loomed on his other side. That kept him from looking too small and alone.

“I did what I thought was for the best before we knew that Sirius was innocent.”

“Then let the past be the past,” said another, thin man whom Dolores remembered after a moment of concentrating. Tacitus Nott, who didn’t show up for that many meetings nowadays due to ill health. “Let’s discuss what happened _last week_ when you broke into Miss Umbridge’s home, Albus.”

Dumbledore’s jaw twitched a little. “I think Harry’s godfather should have custody of him.”

“Then you don’t break in in the middle of the night—”

“I do have custody of Harry! I just have _shared_ custody—”

Lucius and Black broke off and glared at each other. Dolores looked the other Wizengamot members over critically, counting expressions that had a theme of outrage, so she wouldn’t laugh.

“Go ahead, Mr. Black,” said Lucius finally, because it made him look like the gracious one, gesturing with his arm so that his pale sleeve swayed. Black, in that infuriating manner he had, just nodded and turned back to the Wizengamot, accepting the gesture without feeling obligated for it.

“I have custody of Harry,” he explained. “But I don’t have any houses that are clean and ready for a _kid_! If you saw Grimmauld Place right now…” He shuddered a little. Then he turned and looked down at Harry, and his face softened.

“And Harry wants to stay with Dolores. She rescued him from people who were mistreating him. What kind of godfather would I be if I didn’t let him stay where he’s comfortable?”

There were people murmuring and nodding all around the room. Dolores relaxed a little. She had known it was a good move to make an ally of Black, but she hadn’t realized how much respect he would get for his family name.

“And you, Miss Umbridge? You’ve been quiet through all of this.”

Dolores tilted her head back and squarely met Lucius’s gaze. He might think to play with her by mentioning her now, but she had the words ready.

“I’ve been keeping quiet until the esteemed members of the Wizengamot should ask for my input,” she said, and gave a small curtsey, which she noticed some people nodding in approval over, too. “But I believe the facts are obvious. Sirius Black wishes Mr. Potter to stay in my custody. And I want to have Harry with me, too. And Albus Dumbledore broke through the defensive spells on my house to come and kidnap Harry.”

“I did not do such a thing.” Dumbledore had taken up the persona of sad but noble Hogwarts Headmaster, shaking his head over someone misunderstanding him like that. “I knew that Miss Umbridge would never allow Harry to meet his godfather, so I broke in with the desire to present the boy with a link to his past and let him make his own choices.”

“That’s not what you said at the time,” Black muttered.

Dolores saw that no one appeared to have heard him, and opened her mouth to speak in turn, but Lucius was already doing so. “What proof did you have that Madam Umbridge would never let Potter meet Black?”

“My own instincts, of course. When someone attempts to keep the Boy-Who-Lived for the sake of political power, it becomes obvious that—”

“And yet, Miss Umbridge was the one who said something in the last Wizengamot session to discuss Potter’s custody that I believe prompted you to look into Black’s trial records,” said Lucius musingly. “That doesn’t sound as though she was taking all routes possible to keep Potter to herself.”

“And if anyone was keeping the Boy-Who-Lived for the sake of political power…” Black tugged Harry against him, rumpling his robes so that Dolores had to bite her lips in disapproval. But it was all made-up for by the way he was glaring at Dumbledore.

A whisper of laughter circled the room. Dumbledore spread his hands. “You know that I was only thinking of the future of the wizarding world, Sirius.”

“W-what about _my_ future?”

Dolores turned swiftly. They hadn’t discussed Harry speaking unless someone asked him a direct question, and then both she and Black had agreed it would be a good idea if he only said a few specific things. This wasn’t one of them.

But from the way Harry stared at Albus Dumbledore and people murmured, as Dolores had known they would, “What a beautiful child!”, this might work after all.

“What about _my_ future?” Harry repeated. There was such deadness in his eyes that even Dolores wanted to reach out and comfort him. He looked down at the floor, and then he looked back at Dumbledore, but he didn’t seem weak. “What were you thinking when you left me on the doorstep of Muggles you knew hated me?”

“Harry, my boy.” Dumbledore was using that soft voice that usually served him so well in the Wizengamot, because it meant everyone had to calm down and listen to him. “I did not know they would abuse you.”

“You knew—you knew my aunt. Sirius told me.” Harry shuddered a little, but didn’t move, and although at the beginning Dolores had thought he looked like a bird hypnotized by a snake, now she didn’t know who the real snake was. “You knew she was jealous of my mum. You thought you had to threaten her to make her keep me.”

Dumbledore sighed. “There is a large difference between an unhappy home and an abusive one. And between an abusive home and death.”

Dolores made a large noise, unable to help herself, even seeing all the eyes it attracted. He had just _lost_! Black had told her that Dumbledore would want to justify his decisions no matter what, and that would help them, but she hadn’t believed him, not really…

Now, he’d lost.

“So it was all right if I was abused, as long as I didn’t die?” Harry shook his head, his eyes locked on Dumbledore. “I don’t think my mum would like that, sir. She actually _died_ for me.”

“So you could live, Harry! Not so you could always be kept safe.”

Dolores clasped her hands over her mouth. He kept giving them more! He didn’t know when to stop!

She wondered, for a moment, why he’d never been like this in the debates before the Wizengamot when she had watched him and wished he would undermine himself, but then she realized Black had given her the clue to that, as well. He’d said that Dumbledore was at his worst when he wanted to justify himself to someone he felt he’d wronged. There had been no one on the Wizengamot like that in the years Dolores had been attending.

“So you’re saying I would eventually have to die. Or get hurt. Or…something.”

Dolores caught Lucius’s eye, and they exchanged mild nods. Yes, this was _perfect._ And Lucius would move on it before they could lose their advantage.

“I think he is saying that he did not care what happened to you, Harry, because he was too intent on playing Merlin to think his plans could ever go wrong.” Lucius rose to his full height, which Dolores had to admit was more impressive than either she or Black could look, her with her shortness and Black with his thinness from prison. “Well, they did. And now we must look to who would _actually_ take the most care of so precious a life.”

“I know who would,” said Black, and his eyes glittered at everyone, including Dumbledore.

“I beg you to think about what you’re saying, Sirius.” Dumbledore was attempting to keep his voice calm and quiet, but Dolores could hear how badly he wanted to raise it. Even Harry might be able to, from the way he craned his neck at Dumbledore. “I beg you to raise Harry by yourself, if you think you have to, but do what Lily and James would have wanted you to.”

“That’s keep Harry safe,” Black snarled, and his face split so suddenly into a vicious grin that Dolores wanted to back away. But she stood, because it would be fatal weakness for her to do that now. “Not just alive, not leave him with abusive Muggles and throw away the memory, but actually _protect him_.”

“I am the only one who can do that, Sirius. If you knew everything that I did, you would understand why Harry needed to grow up away from the wizarding world, to avoid precisely this kind of situation…”

“But you didn’t tell me, even when you had the time and the privacy to do so,” said Black, and narrowed his eyes. “That makes me think that your arguments aren’t all that convincing after all, and you don’t want to repeat them now, in front of everyone. Or do you? Well. Come on. I’m waiting.”

Even Lucius was silent as they watched Dumbledore struggle. Dolores stood straight and blandly interested and had to smile a little. For the moment, this was a personal battle between Dumbledore and Black, the way it had been between the Headmaster and Harry a short time ago. Dolores knew Dumbledore sounded overblown instead of grand when he tried to retreat to a more personal scale.

“There are secrets that cannot be whispered in front of people like these,” Dumbledore said at last.

 _And that compounds the loss._ Dolores was much more approving than she had thought she would be of this new form of political intrigue, where she stood back and smiled benignly, and Dumbledore destroyed himself with no help from her.

This time, it was the Wizengamot who rose snarling, with members other than Lucius standing up to offer their opinions.

“What do you mean, _people like these_?” That was the immensely old Madam Greengrass, who didn’t even bother to speak up most of the time, and sat back in a posture that the unobservant would think meant she was sleeping. Dolores knew it meant she only responded to the important things. “We’re your colleagues in the Wizengamot, Albus. We’re meant to _help_ make decisions. Or have you started thinking that you can do it all by yourself and you don’t need help, because you’re never wrong?”

“I’m sure he didn’t mean it that way, Evelina,” said Minister Bagnold, although her eyes twinkled. “We only need to ask Albus, and he’ll explain—”

“You’re deluded if you think that, Millicent,” said Abraham Daley, a half-blood who had clawed his way up the ranks with sheer tenacity and a touch that turned Knuts to Galleons. Dolores didn’t approve of his blood, but she could only admire his tactics. “ _Albus Dumbledore_ has apparently gone beyond us, in deciding not only the laws but the destiny of the wizarding world.” Daley turned to stare at Dumbledore. “Haven’t you, Albus?”

“Now, Abraham, I never—”

“Yes, you did,” said Greengrass, and her cane creaked under her hands as she braced herself on it. “You _did,_ Albus. And you’ve gone too far this time.”

“There was no other person to take charge of the child, and he needed a place to stay! I couldn’t spend weeks debating—”

“You didn’t even spend one _night_ ,” said Minister Bagnold, apparently deciding her days of appearing to be moderate were over, and swinging hard on Dumbledore. “And there were plenty of families in the wizarding world that would have taken little Harry, and you asked _none_ of them. Is that what you call reasonable?”

“Now, Millicent—”

As the Wizengamot began to tear him apart, Black leaned towards Dolores, his eyes darting nervously around the room. “Are we supposed to be doing something right about now?”

“No,” said Dolores, and felt a stab of pity for Black when he only stared at her. “Why should we? They’re doing all the work for us.”

She looked down at Harry, who was watching everything with intelligent green eyes that barely reflected any emotion. She nodded to him when he looked up at her, and gave him a quick, reassuring smile. _He_ had more political awareness than Black. Then again, it seemed Dolores had probably taught him better than Black’s parents taught _him_.

“But…I don’t know, do we need to say something, do we need to show that we respect him, or…”

Dolores leaned close to Black, so no one else could hear her words over the chaos flying around the room. “Remember that he left you there to rot, Black. You can feel sorry for him if you want to, but if that makes you endanger Harry, then I shall think less of you.”

She already had the key to Black. His moods could change on the spin of a coin, but there was one thing that would always make his eyes and mouth harden, and that was the mention of some danger to Harry.

“You’re right,” he said, and he folded his arms and leaned back against the pillar behind him, watching the slaughter of Albus Dumbledore’s political power with a cool expression.

In the end, the conclusion was foregone. They gave Black and Dolores shared custody, as Dolores had known they would, and Lucius Malfoy also specified they should stay in Dolores’s house, since Black had confessed of his own free will that he didn’t have a suitable home for Harry.

Dolores saw Dumbledore watching them, and inclined her head. She knew he would probably manage to recover some part of his power. At least, he would remind people of connections and favors and debs they owed him, and he would retain his position as Headmaster, which was not small.

But it would take him months, if not years. And in the meantime, Harry would be growing up under Dolores’s care, learning to resist the way Dumbledore manipulated things so that he would be safe from him when he went to Hogwarts.

As Dolores smiled, something small and cool touched her. She started and looked down.

Harry had just slipped his hand into hers. He stared at her.

“Do you not like it?” he whispered. “I can take it away if you don’t like it.”

But Dolores only shook her head, disregarding the lack of a title, and let it remain. She would not always be lenient, but then again, it was not every day they won such a victory.


	11. The Dining Room

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eleven—The Dining Room_

“So you _agree_ with me that Harry ought to have lessons before he goes to Hogwarts!”

“I’m not sure that we agree in what the lessons ought to be, Mr. Black. Could you sit up and take your elbows off the table, please?”

“Y’know, you don’t have to keep calling me _Mr._ Black. I gave you permission to call me Sirius. Because I know permission matters to you Slytherin types. Can’t you just do that? Mr. Black makes me think I’m my father or something.”

Dolores grimaced at Black. He only flopped back against the chair and laughed at her. She supposed it was a lost cause to try and get him to behave reasonably when he had run away from one of the most prestigious pure-blood families in their world to avoid doing exactly that.

Harry wasn’t awake yet, but now that his custody was firmly settled, she and _Black_ had been discussing his pre-Hogwarts education. Narcissa Malfoy had offered to tutor him in etiquette, but Dolores had politely refused and asked her to concentrate on music instead. Etiquette was so important that she would prefer Harry learned it from her.

Along with history. And politics. And the correct way to observe and listen. But that went without saying. They certainly didn’t say it to each other, she and Narcissa, when Dolores made her apologies, all wide-eyed and smiling, and Narcissa smiled back without moving her lips and accepted the excuses.

“Call me Sirius. You call Harry by _his_ first name!”

“He is a child.” _And I need other people to think I care more about him than I actually do. It would sound strange for a guardian to call the child she adopted and fought for by his last name._ “You are an adult. I thought you would rejoice in being called Mr. Black. Less of a reminder of your childhood.”

Black snorted bitterly and picked at the food in front of him. “My last name is what the guards in Azkaban called me. And the people at the Ministry when they knew I was innocent but wanted to convince me to be on Dumbledore’s side.”

“Dumbledore calls you by your first name, surely.”

“That doesn’t make it tainted forever!”

Dolores refrained from saying that she would have thought political enemies and Azkaban guards would taint a name less than Dumbledore. “It is simply odd to call you that, Mr. Black. You have a higher rank than I do, or at least will once you get some of your political clout back. I am trying to teach Harry to respect the rules of our society—”

“Oh, that’s it!” Black clapped his hands and leaned back in his chair with a face so abruptly relaxed that Dolores had to prevent herself from bristling. “I’m trying to teach him to _break_ the rules. It’s no wonder that we’re having trouble agreeing!”

“When he knows the rules, then he can break them,” said Dolores, after wrestling with herself during a moment when she wanted to shout at Black. But she would have to resist the impulse. Harry adored him. And his help before the Wizengamot had been invaluable. “Surely you had to know why your pranks would horrify and disturb others before you could pull them?”

Black paused. “You won’t make Harry’s childhood like mine was,” he said, in a low, deadly voice.

“No, of course not,” Dolores said, startled into utter truth. “I can’t mimic the upbringing of a Dark pure-blood family from two decades ago.”

For some reason, that made Black start laughing again. Dolores tried to maintain her gaze and her hold on her teacup as both calm and steady. It was difficult, but then again, she thought she knew what she was doing when it came to Black. 

If only he would stop _changing_ all the time.

“My parents would be so happy to hear you say that,” Black finally muttered, still chuckling.

“I imagine they would be.” Dolores patted her lips with a napkin and turned to the stairs when she heard the subtle thump of small feet. She’s first heard them a moment before, when they’d paused near the top. Harry was implementing his lessons well. “I imagine they were people who believed in preserving distinctions between the families.”

“Yeah,” Black muttered to himself, his head falling down and his chin resting on his chest as he watched Harry come into sight at the far end of the stairs. Harry was adjusting his robes. Dolores didn’t think Black had noticed him spying. “You could say that.”

“Good morning, Harry,” said Dolores, and gestured for the house-elf to bring in the toast with marmalade that Harry liked. “I hope that you had a restful sleep.” Black rolled his eyes at her formal courtesy. Well, he could do that. So far, it was her lessons that Harry was paying more attention to, as shown by his little expedition this morning.

“Yes, thank you, Miss Dolores.” Harry started eating the toast, in the neat way Dolores had shown him that dropped fewer crumbs on the floor, but he was watching her and Black at once. The same thing happened when he reached for his porridge and tipped one spoonful of sugar and one of honey onto it.

Dolores smiled. Black rolled his eyes. “You don’t let him eat like a growing boy,” he complained. “You _starve_ him.”

“ _No, she doesn’t._ ”

About to answer herself, Dolores hesitated and settled back in her chair. No. Better to let Harry do this for her. He had jumped to her defense so instinctively that even she was surprised. Now she would wait and see what kind of outcome would stem from Harry and Black’s first argument.

Black blinked and pushed that thick hair out of his face. He would look better with it trimmed and cut, but Merlin forbid he listen to any of _Dolores’s_ suggestions. “I just meant that she—she doesn’t let you have all the sweets she should, Harry. As your guardian. I know she doesn’t starve you like those horrible Muggles starved you, but you’ve got to admit, you could eat more.”

“I eat all the food I want.” Harry spoke in between swallows, keeping his mouth properly closed while he chewed and his elbows off the table. Dolores watched in fascination. She had never been this proud of someone else for so long. It was a strange, floating sensation, as if she had a balloon tethered to her that someone else might snip loose at any moment. 

“I just meant all the _sweets_ you want.” Black held up his hands like they were a _Protego_ shield. “That’s all.”

“I have all the sweets I want.”

Black scoffed so hard that bits of spittle flew across the table. Dolores sighed out in bliss when she watched Harry move his sleeve to avoid them. “You can’t possibly. I see how few you eat. _Every_ growing boy wants more than that.”

“I’m not every growing boy.” Harry punctuated the point by digging his spoon hard into his porridge, but since none slopped over the side of his bowl, Dolores was inclined to forgive him.

“But…you must want more, right?” Black glanced at Dolores for a second, although Dolores honestly wasn’t sure why, and then focused on Harry again. “Have you ever even had a Chocolate Frog? Any of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans? Anything like that?”

“I’ve seen them. And I have them sometimes.” Harry dug his spoon into his porridge again, and this time it was a little harder, but no drops flew onto the table. “I just don’t have them a lot.”

“But you should have them _whenever you want_. You can have them whenever you want when we go to Hogsmeade! I’ll take you. There’s a huge shop there, Honeydukes, that has all the kinds you can imagine. And there are chocolates that seal your mouth shut, and ices that make it impossible to do anything but sing, and—”

“That doesn’t sound fun, though,” said Harry. Dolores saw his hand tremble. It would be time to intervene soon. Harry wasn’t used to arguing with adults who liked him—it was the kind of skill Dolores saw him getting no use out of, so she had not taught it to him—and he was getting upset.

“It would be fun if you used them on me, right!” Black reminded Dolores of a wagging-tailed puppy at the moment, his head lowered and his chin almost resting on the table. She only hoped he didn’t carry the resemblance so far as to piddle on the carpet. “Of course it would be. You could watch me walking around with my mouth stuck shut.”

“That doesn’t sound fun,” Harry repeated, soft but getting worn-down, and Dolores spoke before Black could say anything else.

“It does _indeed_ not sound fun, Harry,” she said, and turned to Black. “I must insist that you not buy him any of those sweets without my express permission, Mr. Black.”

Black gave her a glimpse of a grin, at least if a grin included showing his canines. “Call me Sirius, and I’ll consider it.”

Dolores grimaced, but that was a small enough price to pay, and she could perhaps demonstrate to Harry, by example, that she enjoyed some informal relationships with powerful pure-bloods. “Very well, Sirius. But if Harry does not want to spend his time or money on those pranks, I would assume you would refrain from buying them anyway.”

“He just doesn’t know how fun pranking is!”

“I do,” said Harry, and this time Dolores looked at him sharply. His hand was no longer trembling at his side, but his lowered head and the way his _lip_ was trembling made up for that. “But it’s always fun for other people.”

“What?” Black looked so baffled that Dolores wanted to clap her hand over her eyes. Did he truly understand _nothing_ of the way Harry had grown up, despite knowing the Muggles had been abusive?

“It’s fun for Dudley and people like him. People who beat me up. I don’t want to prank people. I don’t want to _be_ pranked.” Harry shot Sirius a look from burning green eyes that Dolores wanted to applaud. He wasn’t yet at the point where he might make people swoon, but he would reach it without much trouble in a few years. “I don’t want you to buy me pranks, either. Buy me something else.”

“Of course.” Black’s voice was very soft. “What would you like, Harry? Anything you want. I mean, that isn’t sweets or pranks, because you said you don’t want those,” he added hastily as Harry started to open his mouth. 

Harry appeared to be caught off-guard. Dolores kept her frown inwards only. He would have to get used to people wanting to buy him things and give him gifts. That was another lessons they would need to work on soon, how to accept compliments and the rest gracefully.

But then Harry’s chin became firm. He said, “Buy me a pet.”

Dolores sat upright. She liked cats. That was all that she liked. And she was Harry’s legal guardian. She was the one who would say what animals came into her house. “Harry, if you think on what I said—”

“Make it a cat,” Harry went on, oblivious, staring at Sirius as if he was daring him to back down or change his mind. “I know that you like dogs, but _I_ want a cat.”

Dolores frowned openly this time. Was Harry doing this because he wanted a pet, or as a challenge to her authority? He would have to be far stupider than he was not to notice how much she liked cats. That might mean he was slipping around the boundaries she set for his own good and daring her to ban Black from bringing a kitten home.

“Black—”

“You aren’t calling me Siiiirius,” Black sang, and plugged his ears. “I don’t have to liiiiisten to you.”

Dolores closed her eyes in a private moment of utter despair. So, instead of an adult she could count on to back her up and discipline Harry, she had another child to deal with, one who enjoyed flouting her authority in a way that Harry never had.

She didn’t shake her head or snap, because that was what Black wanted. She turned to Harry and asked, “What kind of cat do you want, Harry?”

“The kind that’s part Kneazle,” said Harry at once. “Draco was telling me about his Kneazle kitten, and they’re expensive and knock things over all the time because they want to chase ghosts only they can see. But one who’s part Kneazle wouldn’t be so expensive and wouldn’t jump on things all the time.”

Dolores eased slowly back in her chair. This wasn’t an impulse purchase, then. This was something he had thought about for a while.

And he had probably also thought about how to phrase it. That was why he’d got all the way through those long sentences without stuttering, and without looking away from her, or abating the fire in his eyes.

“A kitten?” she asked. “Or a cat?”

“Either would be fine.” Here, Harry’s eyes flickered downwards, and his mask shattered a bit. “I mean, if you prefer a kitten or a cat, Miss Dolores, that’s what we should get.”

“No way, the furball will be _your_ pet, kiddo!” Sirius shot a hand out to ruffle Harry’s hair. Dolores would have objected to that more, but truly, he could do no harm in that department. “You should get to choose.” He turned to Dolores, shielded the side of his face with the _Daily Prophet_ that had been lying near his plate, and _stuck out his tongue._

Dolores considered the merits of slow-acting poisons, but unfortunately, all the best kinds had been banned in Britain centuries ago by pure-bloods frightened of assassinations. Those who truly needed them brewed their own. That kind of Potions talent was beyond her.

“I still think that Miss Dolores should choose,” said Harry, and his voice was tiny and firm. He kept his head ducked and his eyes away from her. 

“Then I will choose a kitten,” said Dolores, because of course it was the only thing she _could_ say. “A half-Kneazle kitten certified to be _clean_ by the shop.” She gave Black a stern look.

It didn’t matter. He’d already leaped up on his toes and was grinning, looking like he was a minute’s excuse from spinning around in a circle. “Of course! One half-Kneazle kitten, coming right up!” And he dashed into the drawing room, and a second later, Dolores heard his call of, “The Leaky Cauldron!” as he Flooed away.

Left alone, Harry tightened his grip on his spoon for a moment. Then he looked directly at Dolores and asked, “Are you angry?”

“About you leaving off what I told you to call me.”

“Sorry, Miss Dolores.” But the flinch was smaller than it would have been a week ago, Dolores thought. Before Black came to live with them.

She had to consider, then, what kinds of undesirable lessons he would teach Harry, as well as what advantages he could add to them. She could raise a legal fuss if she desired, and turn Black out.

But Black could still teach Harry things she could not, about what a proper pure-blood family had been like. It almost did not matter that Black mocked and violated those lessons (save for augmenting her conviction that he would have ended up in prison sooner or later, even if not for that particular crime). She could still draw on them and paint a realistic, sane picture for Harry to emulate.

“No,” she said finally, “I’m not angry.” Perhaps on the day that Black truly showed his horrible side she would be, but not now.

She started as Harry flew off the chair and at her. She almost drew her wand, but in truth, they hadn’t started dueling lessons yet, and she didn’t think Harry, with his small face and frame and ribs that ached, could hurt her without a spell.

And then he grabbed her, and she discovered that he was squeezing her in the way no one could squeeze him, because of his ribs. 

“Thank you,” he breathed. “Thank you, Miss Dolores. That’s something they would never have done for me. Ever. No matter what. Thank you for letting me, and not getting angry when Sirius wanted to get something for me. Thank you.”

Dolores blinked and put her arms slowly around the strange child. He thought she would be angry enough to act like the Muggles? She had done something wrong. She had not been as guardian-like as she should with him. She had let down the lesson somewhere.

Or at least she thought that was it. Because, at the same time, she knew that she would never have agreed to a pet if Harry had proposed it. So there must be something wrong…

How could she agree when it was Black and Harry, and Harry had issued it as a direct challenge to her authority?

But she held Harry, and she let her mouth guide her, for once, without thought, because this was a situation she had never been able to imagine. “You’re welcome, Harry.”

He jerked his head up and gave her a dazzling smile, and then went back to his seat to finish his breakfast, instead of running around the house like an ill-mannered _Black_ of her acquaintance. Dolores watched him in silence as she ate her own meal, and comforted herself with the fact that that must mean her own influence was stronger. If he could act like she had drilled him to, and not as Black had.

But the nagging feeling of _something wrong, something I am missing,_ remained.

*

“His name’s—well, actually, I suppose his name’s whatever you want it to be.”

Black liked playing the careless lord, Dolores saw, although he might deny that description of it. But the offhand way he spoke, and the way his eyes sparkled, and the way he deposited the kitten, white and covered with soft black spots like a miniature snow leopard, on the floor, all confirmed it.

Harry knelt before the kitten and stared at it. It stared back at him, head lifted and tufted tail twitching a little.

And Harry smiled. It was more dazzling than the smile he had given Dolores at the dining table. She felt a little jerk of something like a pin pricking her, and then realized that made no sense. Not a jerk and a pinprick at once.

But in the meantime, Harry had picked up the kitten, and said, as firmly as though someone was going to take the name away from him, “His name is Pardus,” which at least told Dolores that he was paying attention to his Latin lessons.

“Pardus?” Black asked, his mouth downturned. “Why not something more fun?”

Harry turned his head and gave Black the same kind of arrogant look Black had used when giving him the kitten. “Because that’s what _I_ want to name him.”

And Dolores could be glad of a kitten in the house after all, because Harry should take what he wanted from the world, not beg for it, however much asking might become a child, and Black blinked and backed down and even uttered a sort of stammering apology.

Harry caught her eye as he took Pardus out of the room, dangling and purring in his arms, and mouthed two more words.

_Thank you._

Dolores sighed a little. At least Harry was still firmly following her lessons.

_And at least it is a cat._


	12. A Joust

“He is a remarkable child, Dolores. You are to be congratulated.”

Narcissa Malfoy’s voice was soft and cool and unforced. She was peeling grapes with the perfect speed, a speed that Dolores had sometimes seen in other houses, and knew was probably the preferred pure-blood way to do it.

They sat in the drawing room where Harry and Draco tended to play together. Today, the boys were whispering together over a set of blocks. Regularly, Pardus bounded through them and knocked them down. Draco had looked indignant the first time that happened, but Harry had only laughed and reached out to pet the kitten.

Dolores would have to make sure that he did not become too fond of the beast, of course. This close, she could see how it was helping Harry to connect to Draco, and was not inclined to interfere.

Narcissa was watching the boys, too. There was a faint line between her brows. Dolores suspected she knew exactly what it was about. The Malfoys would have trained their son to be a leader, and here he was, falling as if naturally into the role of follower.

_Then again, they never trained their son for the possibility of encountering this kind of Boy-Who-Lived._

Dolores interrupted before Narcissa could gather too many of her thoughts. “Thank you. But your husband is the one who helped ensure that I had the chance to _raise_ this remarkable child.”

Narcissa’s face relaxed, and she made a small toast to Dolores with her cup. “Yes, that was well-done of him, was it not? He _does_ so enjoy it when he has a chance to make a fool of Dumbledore in the Wizengamot.”

“How soon is Dumbledore likely to regain power?” Dolores didn’t bother peeling the grapes. She didn’t know the right method—although she was watching Narcissa to learn it—and she didn’t want to make a fool of herself. Besides, it would make Narcissa a little more relaxed, a little more contemptuous, if she had something to look down on Dolores for.

_And then, when she is relaxed enough, I can begin to walk circles around her the way Harry already is around Draco._

“It will be some time.” Narcissa had a shark’s smile when she wanted to use it, complete with teeth. “He will have to convince some of his followers that he is _worth_ something, after the way they saw him completely humiliated.”

Before Dolores could ask another question, Narcissa added, “I looked forward to seeing my cousin Sirius, and introducing Draco to him.”

“Sirius is out researching the best way to make one of his ancestral homes livable,” Dolores said, which was true. Or half-true. It had certainly been the reason he gave her as to why he couldn’t attend the afternoon tea with Narcissa.

The other half was that he had told her, concisely, “I never want to see Cissy again. Not after some of the things she said to me when I was in Azkaban.”

That had made Dolores curious, because she couldn’t imagine a woman of Narcissa’s elegance visiting Azkaban, but she also had years with Sirius as she had years with Harry, she imagined. She would find out the truth in time.

Narcissa gave a low chuckle. Dolores focused on her, wondering if she’d figured out that Sirius was avoiding her, but Narcissa only shook her head and said, “And that doesn’t worry you?”

“I assume that even Sirius Black can get in limited trouble on a trip to London.”

“You don’t see what he’s doing.” Narcissa lowered her head a little in a gesture that reminded Dolores of a dog protecting her throat, and glanced once at Harry and Draco. They were absorbed in a game that was made of blocks and Pardus and a small ball. “You don’t see that he’s going to take Potter away from you the moment he has somewhere suitable for him to live.”

“I doubt he would do that. The Wizengamot gave custody to me—”

“But he is Harry’s godfather, and a Black. And if he hid behind the wards our ancestors put up, you would never get in.”

Dolores nibbled a biscuit and sighed a little. “He spent the last seven years in Azkaban. I doubt he even wants to chance going back.”

Narcissa gave a harsh little laugh like a crow coughing. “They wouldn’t put him in _Azkaban_ for something like that. They would take custody away from you after hemming and hawing for a few days, and decide that Potter’s better off in the hands of his pure-blood godfather than he ever could be in the hands of a woman whose mother was a _Muggle_.”

 _It has come, then._ Dolores had expected the challenge, but not so soon. She had thought the Malfoys would try to wriggle themselves further into Harry’s life so _they_ could claim custody of him and stand a chance of having it believed.

But of course, Narcissa thought she could prevail on Sirius to do it, and then use the cousin connection to continue visiting Harry and influencing him however she wished.

Dolores folded her face into an expression of deep mourning, and sighed, and didn’t speak for a few minutes. Narcissa stared at her more and more narrowly, and one slippered foot tapped under the hem of her gown.

“And _I_ thought that I was entrusting Harry’s training to some of the most intelligent and vibrant people in the wizarding world,” Dolores said softly. “People who would help him build alliances, and introduce him to the old traditions, and teach him that power is the most important thing. Power, and how it moves people. I didn’t realize that I was simply exposing him to more prejudice.”

“Do you deny your parentage?”

“No more than you deny yours. The difference between us is that I don’t mistake my parentage for the _source_ of my power.”

Narcissa’s nostrils flared, and for a second, Dolores thought she might actually make her shout. Then she shot a glance at the little boys and curved her neck downwards again. “Harry would be upset if I were to take Draco away.”

“And you still misunderstand power. You should be thinking more about _Draco_ being upset if he no longer has access to his friend.”

Narcissa’s hand tightened on a biscuit so hard that it crumbled. She was fighting to control her tongue, and Dolores watched in interest. When Sirius had told her about Narcissa saying those things to him, she had thought it was strange, out of character for the poised woman.

But now she thought she could see the real Narcissa. Not such a poised woman after all, but one who lived so high in the embrace of power that normally she encountered nothing that _could_ ruffle her. That only made her self-control all the weaker when she came face to face with a stronger opponent.

Dolores sipped her tea, and smiled.

Narcissa finally looked up and spoke in a grinding voice, as if she had gears locked in her throat. “There will be people who take him away from you. When he goes to Hogwarts. When he finds friends who will teach him to despise Muggles.”

“He already does that,” said Dolores comfortably. “What you’re talking about is teaching him to despise half-bloods. And forgetting that he’s a half-blood himself, and loves his mother.”

Narcissa jumped as if Dolores had stabbed her with a knitting needle. “You—you can’t be sure that he sees you as his mother, not yet,” she said, and stumbled over the words, even though it never turned into a stammer.

“I wasn’t talking about me. I was talking about his Muggleborn mother, Lily Potter, who died to save him.”

Narcissa stared at her with shadowed eyes, perplexed. Dolores sipped some more of the tea and watched her. Was she really this weak? Dolores had spent so many weeks admiring the strength of the Malfoys, how Lucius delighted in outmaneuvering Dumbledore, how Narcissa was so graceful and cool, how Draco was politer than Harry without ever seeming to try.

But…if Narcissa had reminded her of porcelain, well, porcelain was beautiful and pure. It was also easily breakable.

“You cannot be teaching him that.”

“It’s history.”

“I didn’t mean—” Narcissa stopped. There was no good way to put what she was trying to say into words, Dolores thought, still watching her, because it was nothing good.

Narcissa finally managed to rest her hands on her lap and release some of the air that had collected in her lungs. “I only meant,” she said, “that his mother is dead, and you are alive.”

“I’m his guardian. I know that I can’t take the place of his parents, and I’m not going to try.” Dolores wondered if Narcissa had noticed that Harry was petting Pardus, his face ducked, but that he had his head turned so a single bright green eye peeked out at them.

“But Sirius could. And what are you going to do when he tries to take Harry away from you?”

 _Choose my allies more carefully next time._ “We’ll have to wait and see if it actually happens.”

“How could he choose to stay in a house with someone like you?”

“He chose to associate with James Potter after he married his wife. And he was friends with half-bloods as well, from what I remember.” Dolores shrugged a little. “I don’t think he holds to the same Black family standards that you do.”

Narcissa’s eyes had an ugly glint in them. Dolores wondered for a moment whether she was so emotional that she was no longer bothering to conceal what she really thought, or whether she simply thought Dolores was a weak opponent, so she could show those feelings to her.

 _She is not as strong as I thought._ Dolores blew across the surface of her tea, although it had long since cooled. “Surely you don’t think that pure-bloods alone are worthy of your attention,” she added lightly. “Or should be worthy of Harry’s.”

“I know what you are.”

“A half-blood, with a Muggle mother?” For the first time, Dolores didn’t wince to herself as she spoke those words. They were true, and more than that—she was discovering they could be a source of power, something she had never suspected. “That is true.”

“I didn’t mean that. I know what you want. And you _won’t_ get it. A Black should raise him. If not me, then Sirius.”

 _So she always intended to take custody away from me. And probably soon, much sooner than I thought she would move._ Dolores turned her head to look up at Narcissa, who had risen to her feet. “Maybe you should think about this. About what you really want, and whether you can get it like this.”

Narcissa’s eyes were little grey slits. Dolores thought of a colleague at work who was a half-blood, and whom she had always despised because he would react like this, flailing around and making it so clear, with no subtlety, what he wanted and who he blamed when he didn’t get it.

Dolores had always thought that came from the fact that his pure-blooded mother had walked out on his Muggle father when he was young, and hadn’t been there to teach him the proper etiquette of how one remained calm and smug in the face of obstacles. Now she thought, in wonder, that it might have nothing to do with blood at all.

“Mother?”

That was Draco. Narcissa seemed to come to a sense of what she owed her family and her position, and drew herself up until her hair threatened to topple out of the neat net she’d woven it into. “Come, Draco. We are _leaving_.”

“But Harry was going to teach me how to throw the ball so Pardus would fetch it,” Draco whined.

Dolores glanced at him. He was pouting, and he didn’t seem to pale or otherwise know why he should shut up as his mother turned to him and glared. Perhaps, in the end, there were some things stronger than the Malfoys’ family bonds.

“Get your toys, Draco. We are leaving.”

Draco blinked at her, then folded his arms and said, “I didn’t bring any toys. These are all Harry’s. And I want to _stay_.”

Narcissa swept towards him and bent down, saying something Dolores dearly wished she could hear. It didn’t change Harry’s expression, but it did Draco’s. He got up with his head hanging, and stood there for a moment as his mother swept out of the room and into another to use the Floo there, even though they’d come in by this one.

“I don’t want to go,” Draco whined under his breath to Harry.

“I think you have to do what your mum says,” said Harry, his eyes calm. “That’s the way mums are.” He looked at Dolores, and then stood up and shook Draco’s hand. “I’m sure that I’ll see you again, though.”

“How, if my Mum won’t bring me here?” Draco looked even more depressed. Dolores swallowed more tea and wondered if the Malfoys knew what a perfect little follower they were raising. At least, a follower for Harry Potter, if not other wizards without his name and reputation.

Harry leaned in and whispered, but Dolores had cast a charm that let her hear every word. “My godfather. Sirius will take me anywhere I ask, and you can sneak out and meet us, okay? We can do that.”

Dolores raised her eyes to the ceiling and hoped that she would manage to hold her calm, as Narcissa had not, when Sirius inevitably suggested that. He might _think_ he was the one who had come up with the plan, but she had the clearest proof now about who was in charge.

“Okay, Harry!” As Narcissa called for him in a voice like sleet, Draco hugged Harry and then ran into the other drawing room. Harry blinked and looked at his robes as if he was trying to make sure that Draco hadn’t messed them up.

“You did well,” said Dolores.

Harry turned to her, his eyes solemn. He was still petting Pardus with one hand. The kitten was almost asleep, lying in his lap with his tail on the floor and his paws batting the air. Now and then he caught the edge of Harry’s robe, but Harry always moved before his claws could tear it.

When the fire whooshed and then subsided, Harry took a deep breath and asked, “Is that what mothers are always like?”

“Not always,” said Dolores. “Some mothers raise their children properly.”

Harry nodded. He was sitting with his hand in Pardus’s fur, but the kitten was completely asleep now. He seemed distressed, and Dolores sat up and waited until he looked towards her with a wince that suggested he was still thinking.

“I don’t know if I want a mother, if she would be like Mrs. Malfoy.”

Dolores buried the impulse to cackle in triumph, and only said, “Well, your mother would have been very different from Mrs. Malfoy.”

“Because she was Muggleborn?”

“No. Because she would have raised you properly. She wouldn’t have let you be raised by Muggles, but she also wouldn’t have let you think that _you_ are a member of the only powerful family in the world.”

Harry blinked twice. His hand had gone still in its stroking of his kitten. “Do you think Draco thinks that? He’s never said it.”

“Not to you, perhaps. But you are the Boy-Who-Lived, and that means you have your own power. I suspect that the Malfoys are very different around Draco’s other friends. Perhaps that is why he wanted to stay with you so badly,” Dolores added delicately, guiding the conversation in the direction she wanted it to go. “Because he can talk to you in a way that he cannot to his other friends. He can have a more equal relationship with you.”

_Never truly equal. But that’s not something Harry needs to know all the nuances of, not when he and Draco are falling into their roles so naturally._

“Miss Dolores?”

“Yes?”

Harry looked up at her, his eyes blazing with a determination that she had only seen before when he was confronting the Wizengamot. “I want to know how to use my power. But I _never_ want to be like Mrs. Malfoy. I never want to think that my power is the only kind that matters.”

“I think there’s very little chance of you being like Mrs. Malfoy, Harry,” Dolores said softly, and reached out to touch his hair. It was softer than the fur of Pardus, whom she had only touched once in any case. “I’m not a pure-blood who could teach you all the correct terminology and laws, anyway.”

“But I don’t _want_ to be like her.”

“Who do you want to be like?”

“Myself.”

Dolores blinked a little, because she’d been hoping—anticipating—that he would say, “You,” but this was certainly an acceptable substitute. At least it would mean that he was unlikely to let Sirius or Dumbledore or anyone else influence him, once he was out of her control and at Hogwarts.

“Then we can teach you to be like that,” she said. “There are tutors I was avoiding because very few respectable pure-blood families would hire them, but…”

“I _want_ them. I want to be myself.”

 _And that is a protection I did not count on,_ Dolores thought, as she watched Harry sitting up taller and straighter. _A sense of self so rarely fully developed in a child._

_Yes, taking him away from the Muggles has been one of my best decisions._


	13. Introducing the Tutors

“But you haven’t told me what I’m supposed to learn from him yet, Miss Dolores.”

Dolores smiled down at Harry. She was particularly proud of this coup, although this wizard wasn’t one the less respectable families would have hired; he was welcome everywhere in their world. Dolores only intended that he stay one day, however. “When you meet him, I think you’ll understand,” she said smoothly, and opened the door of the drawing room.

“Miss Umbridge! Splendid of you to have read my books and _remembered_ my favorite delicacy! And I’ll have to compliment your house-elves on how well they matched the tea to it. And the mirrors here, simply _wonderful_ in how well they reflect…”

Dolores knew without looking that Harry’s jaw was dropping open next to her. She ignored him with a delicious feeling, other than to deliver a sharp poke to his back. That would get him to close his mouth.

“Enough with the sweet nothings, please, Mr. Lockhart,” she simpered, and no one knew how to simper better than she did. She dipped a curtsey, and came up squinting against the dazzle of the light on Lockhart’s teeth and robes. He had opened curtains that normally stayed shut all the time, since she rarely used this room to entertain. “ _You’re_ the one honoring our humble home.” This time, she looked back and gestured Harry forwards. “And here’s a young fan who’s thrilled to meet you.”

Lockhart beamed down on Harry and held out a hand to shake. Harry did it with all the grace Dolores had taught him and all the enthusiasm of someone handling a dead rat. “Delighted, delighted! Of course, some people would say that I shouldn’t take time out of my busy schedule, but I always find it so important to encourage the youth. Don’t you, Miss Umbridge?”

“Oh, yes!” _Encourage him to be nothing like you._ Dolores blinked her eyelashes and gave Lockhart a melting glance, and it seemed her information on him had been accurate. It didn’t matter what she looked like; in fact, he might like that better because then there was no competition. It mattered that she was an adoring witch. “You’re such an inspiration to everyone, Mr. Lockhart. Monster fighters, people who care about defeating the Dark Arts, and of course now teachers and parents. I simply couldn’t wait to have you meet Harry.”

“And how’s the young hero?” Lockhart bent down to look Harry in the eye, his hands on his knees. “Looking forward to more exploits? It’ll be a long time before you can match my heroics, of course, but I see your fame is already out there!”

Harry gave Dolores a patently begging look. Dolores gave him a merciless one back, and Harry composed himself and mumbled the sort of polite expression he’d been taught to use around the Malfoys. “You’re flattering me, Mr. Lockhart—”

“So formal! We’re not in Hogwarts or anything, Harry.” Lockhart laughed loudly enough that Dolores thought she heard the glass rattling in the mirrors (that she’d deliberately hung up around the room in more abundance than usual, because she knew it would encourage him not to go wandering, if he was so busy admiring himself). “Please, call me Gild.”

“ _Gild_?”

Dolores turned slowly to stare at Harry, but luckily, she didn’t need to. Lockhart hadn’t noticed anything mocking in the response. He spread his arms and nodded. “I know. It’s kind of shocking that my parents gave me a name that so clearly looked forward to my future endeavors, right? _Gild_ , like _gold_ , which of course I am! True gold, all the way through!”

He posed, with another smile on his face. Harry cleared his throat with a violent cough. In that, he was admittedly doing better than Dolores had expected. “What am I going to learn from you, er, Gild?”

“Oh, my, a little bit of everything! Defense, curses, hexes, jinxes, battling Dark creatures, the Mind Arts, being a hero, styling your hair, handling small talk, curses…” Dolores wondered when Lockhart would realize that he’d said “curses” twice, but he appeared more concerned with having run out of fingers. “Well, you know, Harry! Being in the world as a famous person, I suppose you could call it. A unique course. Just like _me_.”

He winked, and whipped a winking photograph of himself from behind his back in the same moment and held it out to Harry. “Here, treasure it. This is one of the pictures included in my forthcoming book, _Voyages with Vampires_.”

Harry took the picture as if he thought its over-large smile would turn suddenly into vampire fangs. “I’ll always remember it.”

“That’s a good boy!” Lockhart cocked a finger at Harry, winked, and then turned and looked around vaguely. “There was going to be a blackboard, right? Or something I could write on?”

Dolores clapped her hands, and two of the house-elves who had attended the Potter properties popped into being, holding a board between them. It was already spelled to make sure that none of the words Lockhart wrote stayed there for long, but that didn’t matter. Any second, either Harry would come up with a way to get out of this or Dolores would have to cause a diversion because, well, Harry would come up with a way to get out of this.

“Now, where to begin…” Lockhart appeared to notice the chalk he was holding for the first time and smiled at it. “Poor thing. It _wishes_ it was as white as my teeth!”

Harry opened his mouth, and the look of absolute disgust on his face was one that Dolores had only seen before when he was talking about the Dursleys. She coughed and said, “Mr. Lockhart, I don’t mean to intrude, but what’s that at the corner of your eye?” She flicked her wand at the same time, casting the wordless spell she’d been practicing for this day.

“Where?” Lockhart dropped the chalk and spun around to stare into a mirror, and at the pimple that Dolores had conjured. He gave a faint gasp, and clutched at his face. “W-what is _that_?”

“That’s what I was wondering, Mr. Lockhart,” said Dolores meekly. “See, Harry had one like it the other day, and by the middle of the day they were all over his face and making his nose swell up, and the mediwitch we took him to said that he was lucky he ever got it back to its normal shape—”

“I—I m-must go,” said Lockhart, and cleared his throat nosily. He was trying not to spend too much time staring at the spot, but he was as unsubtle as Harry when he was first in front of the Wizengamot. “I trust that you’ll excuse me? I—there are things I can teach him by letter!”

“Of course,” said Dolores, and opened the door of the drawing room. Lockhart immediately ran out, even though he’d arrived by Floo. Dolores supposed that he thought Apparition would be a quicker way to get to St. Mungo’s.

Then she turned to Harry and closed the curtains and turned the mirrors to the wall with a flick of her wand. “What was he meant to teach you?”

“I don’t know.”

Dolores waited, and when he said nothing, her eyebrows crept up, and she took a sliding step forwards. Harry went on staring at her with his lip out. He looked more like a child now than he had in a long time.

“Harry,” she said, and her voice was gentle. He knew her well enough to realize that was dangerous.

“Fine.” Harry lowered his head, although his hands were curling into tiny, dirty-nailed fists at his sides. “I think he was meant to teach me how fame can go to your head. You’re always talking about how pure-bloods like the Malfoys let their blood status go to their heads. He’s only one person, and maybe not a pure-blood, but the same thing’s happened to him.”

“He is someone powerful and famous,” said Dolores, and she made her voice gentle. “That means he could still have some things to teach you.”

“But you acted like there was only one. So there probably _was_ only one.” Harry’s gaze rested on her, heavy.

“I will not tolerate disrespect.”

Harry swallowed in the way he usually only did when he was trying to get through vegetables on his plate. “Sorry, Miss Dolores.” Pardus wandered through the open door, and Harry spent a moment stroking his fur, head lowered so she couldn’t see his face. “I just—I really hated him.”

Dolores reminded herself, before she scolded Harry for a sentiment so extreme, that children didn’t always use their words correctly. He might say he hated Lockhart and mean something else. “Why?” she asked, and as a further thought, sent the copies of Lockhart’s books on the shelves and tables flying out of the room. She would find a storage cupboard to put them in, just in case she ever had to bring him back.

“Because he sounded so _fake_!” Harry looked up fast enough to startle Pardus and make the kitten spring away. “He chattered and he sounded like Uncle Vernon trying to make a sales pitch! How can people like him and buy his books? How can everyone not see right through him?”

Dolores paused, then let a faint smile come to her lips. It seemed she had raised Harry to take more advantage of his intelligence than she had realized. “You know he sells a lot of books.”

“Yes,” said Harry, lowering his head as he once again stroked Pardus.

“That means people must buy them. Maybe not always for themselves, but then as gifts for people who are his fans.”

“Yes,” said the boy with a faint sigh.

“What does that tell you about the people who buy them?”

“That they’re stupid?”

Dolores chuckled, despite her dislike of his vocabulary. “You won’t use such words in front of an audience like the Malfoys, Harry.”

Harry remained quiet for a second, then lifted his head. He was trying the sort of grin on her that he normally only used on Sirius. “But it’s okay if I use it in front of you?” Then he sounded as if he was holding his breath.

Dolores weighed some of the benefits of increasing informality, and ignored the way Harry had started to fidget in place. Let him sweat. If he couldn’t bear the possible consequences of asking impertinent questions, then he shouldn’t ask them.

On the one hand, she always wanted Harry to respect her. And signs that he didn’t would get pounced on right away by the Narcissa Malfoys of their world. It might even lead to another attempt to remove Harry from her custody.

On the other hand…

Harry was more at ease with Sirius. He joked with him, laughed with him, and made Sirius do things like smuggle sweets to him that Dolores had absolutely forbidden. Dolores had done her best to laugh instead of snap when she found out. She had to get along with both of them: Harry for the sake of her future power, and Sirius for the sake of not getting him angry enough to apply for custody on his own.

It wouldn’t be a bad thing for people to see him at his ease with her, too. That she didn’t have only one mood, and could laugh and joke with a child.

“Yes, you can use it around me,” she said, and meant to go on, to explain why she’d decided that, but Harry flung his head up and gave her such a dazzling smile that her words dried up. Dolores blinked a few times while Harry whooped and ran over to hug her arm.

“Thank you! Thank you! See, I _told_ him he was wrong!”

“Who was wrong?” Dolores was trying to maintain her cool composure, but she hadn’t recovered from the impact of that smile.

“Sirius! He said you’d never allow it! He said he was the only one who could joke with me, and I better not even try with you!” Harry grinned at her. “He was wrong! He’s going to be so surprised when I tell him!”

“Were you—betting on this?” Dolores could have been in front of the Wizengamot and still been unable to temper the cold in her voice. She did not want Black encouraging Harry in needless wagers of the kind he had mentioned making in Diagon Alley and Knockturn Alley. Harry couldn’t afford to waste his time, his money, or his reputation.

“No. I just said that I thought you would let me use it, and he didn’t think so. It wasn’t a bet, just a guess.”

Although not convinced that Black would take it the same way, Dolores let herself be persuaded. “Why does it matter so much to you, being able to say this word in front of me, Harry?”

Harry shut down again, just like that, staring at Pardus, even though he was dozing on the floor with the tip of Harry’s sock clasped between his paws. But Dolores had become good at reading Harry, and she knew he wanted to answer. She stayed still.

“The Dursleys would never let me say anything like that,” Harry finally replied, in a murmur. “They were the ones who got to call me a freak and stupid and everything like that. I couldn’t use any words that were insults.”

“And did their son also insult you?”

“Yes. Dudley called me—lots of things, but mostly the same things Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia did.”

Dolores nodded. If Muggle children used more profanity than that, she neither needed nor wanted to know. “All right. You know that you don’t want to diminish your credit in the eyes of pure-bloods by saying the same kinds of things?”

“I know. But that’s why you said I could say them in front of you and Sirius. Just not out in public.”

“Good,” said Dolores. “I merely wanted to make sure that temptation would not overtake you if you saw, say, Lockhart in public.”

As often happened when she used more formal language, Harry looked puzzled, but then his face cleared. “I would never want to say anything like that to _him_ ,” he said. “He would understand it. I want to insult him and make sure that he doesn’t understand it. It’s more fun that way.”

Dolores smiled at him. She had sometimes wondered, given his unfortunate heritage, if Harry would be a Gryffindor when he went to Hogwarts, and one of those brash politicians who tried to make friends with every action he took. But she thought she recognized reality now. He would be a Slytherin, and while of course he still needed work on subtlety, he would be a credit to his name and her training at last.

“Good,” she said, and leaned out to lightly touch his shoulder. It was his godfather who would ruffle his hair or grab him and mess up his robes. Dolores preferred to keep their marks of affection separate in Harry’s mind. “And you’ve learned the lessons from Mr. Lockhart that I wanted you to learn.”

“Gild,” Harry muttered, and snickered.

 _Even that doesn’t sound too bad on him._ “Yes. Go and play for now.”

Harry scooped up Pardus and left the room. Dolores leaned back in her chair and carefully considered the letter that had arrived that morning. There was a tutor Sirius had recommended for very basic dueling techniques—something Dolores wasn’t good at and Sirius didn’t have the patience for—and ancient magical history. Dolores wanted to teach Harry recent political history all on her own, but she had to admit she didn’t have the head for the ancient things, either.

_Well. We’ll respond positively for now, and see whether this Mr. R. J. Lupin is really as good as Sirius thinks he is._

*

“Remus!”

Sirius went flying across the drawing room and into Mr. Lupin’s arms the moment he stepped out of the fireplace. Dolores sighed. Well, she supposed she had to put part of that down to Sirius’s general immaturity, as well as the fact that he wouldn’t have seen his old Gryffindor friend for at least seven years.

“Sirius.”

Lupin’s voice was thick as he held Sirius. When she studied him, Dolores thought she could understand the reason why. His robes were clean and of good material, but patched with household charms that no elf had cast. And his hair was greying before its time, and shaggy in a way that suggested he’d been cutting _that_ himself, too.

 _Of course he would be grateful to his friend for getting him a good job,_ Dolores thought, and stood up to present herself.

Lupin turned towards her and held out a hand to shake. When Dolores did, she found him holding it with unexpected fervency. “Thank you for rescuing Harry from those awful Muggles,” he said. “Sirius has only told me a little about them, but that’s enough.”

Dolores studied the anger in his eyes, and nodded. “I think you’ll fit in well here, Mr. Lupin. For now, you’re not to teach Harry any history more recent than 1960, if you please. I want to cover recent political events myself.”

“Of course.” Lupin had the kind of smile that probably had once been bright, before hardship had worn it down. “I think that’s best, in any case. I’ve lived out of the world among my books for a while.”

Sirius laughed as if this was a grand joke and grabbed Lupin’s arm. “Come on, let me introduce you to our little prince!”

Dolores sighed as the two of them bounced out of the room, or bounce-dragged, given their combined motion. Well, she would probably get used to them in time, and she didn’t _really_ think she needed to supervise Harry’s first meeting with Lupin.

From what she’d been able to learn about him, Lupin was a former Gryffindor, a half-blood, and a quiet man who had been a close friend of Harry’s parents, just as Sirius had. He’d gone into mourning and retreat from the world after Sirius went to prison. It seemed poverty had also been part of the cause of that.

_As long as he doesn’t teach Harry any uncivilized manners, he’ll do. We already have Sirius for that._


	14. Learning Things

 

“You can see that there was a reason for wizards to remain secret from Muggles once they started to hunt them down. Even if we still wanted to be around Muggles on a day-to-day basis—and there are some wizards who do—we couldn’t, because they might want to hurt us.”

Dolores nodded a little. She was outside the door of the study where Lupin was teaching Harry, and she had created a small hole in it long before and shielded it with illusions that would make it look like the same heavy wood as the rest of the door. But the illusions could be pierced by _her_ eyes.

So far, she had found nothing exceptionable in the lesson. Lupin used less forceful terms than Dolores would have when talking about Muggles, and he paced back and forth instead of sitting at the desk Dolores had provided in solitary splendor.

But he still wore better robes than he had when he first arrived, robes that he had bought with his first payment from Dolores, and Harry wore the bright green ones that he always did for formal lessons and took notes on parchment with quill and ink. Dolores was glad that Narcissa Malfoy had taken over the chore of teaching him to do that, too. Dolores could think of little more boring.

“Were Muggles and wizards always enemies?”

“It depends on what you mean by ‘enemies,’ Harry. Most of them nowadays don’t know a thing about us, so it’s hard to say.”

“But you think they would want to hurt us if they found out?”

Dolores shifted her position a little, to keep her ankles from tiring. Her peephole was at eye-height for her, but it was still tiring to stand still for so long. Right now, though, she wouldn’t have walked away from the lesson for a thousand Galleons.

Lupin hesitated, his worn face contorting for a second. “It depends on what you mean by ‘hurt,’ too.”

“Do a lot of them hate the children who grow up with magic around them?” Harry had laid down his quill, and his hands were twisting together. Lupin looked baffled. Dolores wondered why. Sirius certainly seemed to trust him, and would have told him about Harry’s past with the Dursleys. “Do Muggleborn children come to Hogwarts and have—they have bruises and broken bones, and they’re starved, and they don’t trust anyone?”

“Well,” said Lupin as if he had never considered such a thing. Perhaps he hadn’t, Dolores admitted with a small curl of his lip. He seemed _innocent_ in the way Sirius had once been, before Dolores had pointed out what Dumbledore had done to him. “I suppose some of them did. I never knew many Muggleborns.”

“Why not? Didn’t you like them?”

_Good boy, Harry. Make him see that he can’t get away with fobbing you off._

“No. It was simply that my friends were pure-bloods like Sirius and your father.” Lupin smiled at Harry. “And I’m a half-blood myself. I grew up in a family that was fully aware of the magical world and never tried to take me away from it.”

He sounded as though he expected that to placate Harry. Dolores could only conclude that he didn’t know his pupil very well yet, as Harry bent the quill until it almost broke and stared stubbornly at Lupin. “But what do you _think_?”

“I think that situations like the one you encountered with your family happen. But not often. And it would be wrong to go to Hogwarts and look at every Muggleborn there as a victim of abuse. Many of them would have loving families.”

“How can I tell?”

“There are—ways to tell if someone is being abused.” Lupin sounded like someone picking his way over broken rock. “Is that what you mean?”

“ _Yes_. I want to know what they are. I want to make sure that I never leave any Muggleborn to be abused like that ever again.” Harry sat up, and there was a look of confidence and sureness on his face that Dolores had never seen before. “Miss Dolores says I have power. I have to learn how to use it. I have to make them safe. Like me.”

Dolores gaped a little, and then checked hastily over her shoulder to make sure Sirius wasn’t there. He had the annoying habit of showing up from nowhere to point and laugh the moment she showed her uncertainty.

But truly, she had never thought in these terms. That Harry would want to use his power to make sure no one abused him again, of course, that made sense. But that he would want to use it to rescue other Muggleborns and Muggle-raised…

 _I suppose that could be a source of power,_ Dolores decided slowly. _Finding people who have no one else to stand up for them and removing them from intolerable situations. I have never cared for that, but then, is that not how I gained my influence with Harry?_

Pursuing her own thoughts, she had missed part of the conversation Harry was having with Lupin. She leaned back when she heard her own name come up again, though.

“—just want you to know that what Miss Dolores says is not the end of the conversation,” Lupin was saying, with a piercing, clear, articulate tone that made Dolores distrust him instantly. He was leaning forwards, balancing like a hummingbird on a branch, and staring avidly into Harry’s eyes. “You can question what anyone says. You _should_ , in fact. We don’t learn by simply repeating platitudes.”

_Nor do we retain our jobs by going against our employers._

But Harry only studied Lupin as if he had no idea what he was talking about. “That would mean questioning you and Sirius.”

“Yes, it would.”

“That would mean questioning what you say about questioning. Which means that sometimes, I should blindly believe something, just to make up for the other times when I question. Right?”

Lupin paused, and then chuckled. Dolores was surprised he could, after hearing Harry make such an alarming statement as that he would he would blindly believe something. Perhaps he thought Harry was joking.

But Harry never tilted his chin up like that when he was joking.

“If you want to do that, that’s up to you,” Lupin said, and ruffled Harry’s hair. Sirius did it all the time and Harry had learned to accept it, but with a man who was still partially a stranger, Dolores saw the way he stiffened and flinched and mastered the temptation to pull back at the last minute. “But we were covering ancient history. The Statute of Secrecy came into being when…”

The rest of the lesson went normally for a time, and Dolores almost left. But then Harry asked a question that didn’t follow the normal flow of the lesson. “You said there were wizards who wanted to spend time around Muggles.”

“I did.”

“Is Albus Dumbledore one of them?”

Lupin paused. Then he said, “I don’t—he speaks up for Muggles, certainly. But I don’t know if he’s Muggleborn or not. Isn’t that something,” he went on, speaking mostly to himself, Dolores was certain. “All of those years working with him in the Order of the Phoenix, where you had to know most people’s blood status as a matter of course. But I never knew. I can’t remember asking.”

“He’s a Muggle-lover?”

“That’s a term you need to be careful how you use, Harry. It would usually imply the wizard thinks Muggles are superior to wizards and wants to sacrifice everything for the Muggles’ comfort.”

Dolores raised her eyebrows. _Where is the lie in that statement?_

“But doesn’t Dumbledore think that? I mean, he thought it was important for me to spend time with my Muggle relatives even though they _hate_ me and I _hate_ them. So that means he thinks they’re more important than I am.”

“No—Harry, no, I’m sure that’s not what he thought—”

Dolores tightened her hold on the doorknob. She would forgive Lupin many things, but not trying to excuse Dumbledore’s actions to Harry.

“He thought I should go back there. He tried to justify that. He must think the Dursleys are more important than I am.”

“I don’t think he thought they were important. Except as the guardians of the Boy-Who-Lived. I know—Dumbledore explained his decision to me—that he thought it was very important that you didn’t grow up in the wizarding world.”

Dolores narrowed her eyes. It sounded as though Lupin had been closer to Dumbledore than Sirius had told her about. Not even Sirius had got an explanation as to what Dumbledore had thought he was doing until after he was released from prison.

“But _why_?”

Lupin answered with a question. “If Dumbledore had let you be adopted in the wizarding world, or if the Ministry had taken custody of you and let that happen, what do you think the pure-blood families would have done?”

“Tried to kill me? Not all of them can be Death Eaters, though.” Harry twiddled his quill between his fingers. Dolores hoped he was remembering _now_ how many times she’d told him not to throw around accusations of working on You-Know-Who’s side. There were people, like Lucius Malfoy, who had been tried for the crime, but for most of them it was only rumors and suspicions.

“No, there would have been a war to adopt you.” Harry jerked his head up, eyes wide, and Lupin hasted to reassure him. “I’m sure it wouldn’t have been a _literal_ war. But everyone would have thought you belonged with them. They would have competed to raise you. If one family got to do it, then all the others would drop in with gifts and try to curry favor. You would have grown up with a swollen head.”

“How do you know that? Miss Dolores told me the truth about what I am, but I don’t think my head is swollen.”

“But you would have been proud, and arrogant,” Lupin said gently. “Think about it. Our world has _never_ had a celebrity like you before. It’s not like the Muggle world where so many of them are famous and people get to see them and gossip about them all the time. You wouldn’t have been able to _help_ becoming proud.”

“I wanted to be.”

The words were so choked Dolores could hardly hear them. She shuffled a little closer to the door, and Lupin gave it a suspicious glance. Dolores ducked her head and concentrated on her breathing. She still managed to look up in time to see Lupin kneel down in front of Harry. “What did you say?” he asked.

“I wanted to be,” Harry whispered. “I wanted presents like my cousin Dudley, and I wanted to be given food and told I was special and I didn’t have to _worry_ about anything.” He stared at Lupin. “I hate Dudley, but I wanted to be him. And Dumbledore didn’t want me to be.”

Dolores held back a sharp chuckle. Lupin might have tried to make the old man’s reasoning palatable to Harry, but he’d succeeded in doing quite the opposite.

“I—that’s not right,” said Lupin. “Your cousin Dudley sounds spoiled. I think Dumbledore just didn’t want you to be spoiled.”

“Why _not_?”

“Your cousin Dudley wasn’t a nice person,” Lupin said, evading the question, as far as Dolores was concerned. “Sirius told me about him, what you said about him. So you shouldn’t want to be spoiled, right?” He ended on a bright, desperate note that Harry ignored.

“But I didn’t want to be starved,” he whispered. “I didn’t want to be—” He stopped. Then he said, “I hate them.”

“Not all Muggles are like them, Harry.”

“But I hate _them_ ,” Harry insisted, with what Dolores thought approvingly was proper fervor. “And I hate Dumbledore for just deciding like that that I would grow up arrogant and spoiled, and he had to leave me there. I could have died. But he didn’t care. He cares more about the Dursleys than me.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” was the only, hopeless thing that Lupin could say. Dolores rolled her eyes. She wondered if Lupin had once been a more impressive person.

Then again, he had seemed knowledgeable and polite when she spoke to him, and those were really the only things Dolores had demanded of a tutor. Perhaps he simply didn’t know what to do when someone questioned his old allegiances.

 _And they had better_ stay _old._

“But I do.” Harry sat up, and he looked into Lupin’s eyes. “So I want to know more things about magical history that have to do with Muggles and _don’t_ have to do with Dumbledore. And I want to know if people abuse Muggleborn children. Okay?”

“I don’t know much about the second one,” Lupin said, scooting backwards as if he was literally moving away from the cliff that Harry’s words had opened up in front of him. “But I can tell you all about the first one.”

Harry watched him the way Dolores had once seen an eagle-owl watching someone who was attempting to steal it. That thief had ended up with a talon in his throat, and for a moment, it seemed Lupin might, too.

But then Harry relaxed and nodded. “Okay.”

Lupin again started to explain about some important laws that separated Muggles and wizards and guided their interactions. Dolores pulled back and went thoughtfully down the corridor.

It seemed she might not have to worry about Harry even when he inevitably went to Hogwarts and got exposed to other viewpoints. He had the right ideas and he was tenacious about defending them.

_I suppose I must give thanks to the Dursleys and the way they reared him that left him more open to a pureblood education._

But after some consideration, Dolores decided the thanks were unnecessary. She didn’t owe those monsters anything except torment.

*

Dolores sat back in the chair in the small café just off Diagon Alley and sipped the tea that she’d bought. She had agreed to serve as lookout for Harry and Sirius’s clandestine meeting with Draco mainly because she wanted to see how the boys interacted without Draco’s parents there to restrain him.

Draco had bolted towards Harry the instant he saw him, and thrown his arms around him. Dolores smiled faintly. It seemed that Sirius’s story of “wanting to reconnect with his cousins” had swayed Narcissa enough to allow him to bring the boy to Diagon Alley.

Of course, it meant Sirius had been required to spend some days metaphorically kissing the hem of Narcissa’s robe first, something he was complaining about in a low voice to Dolores, under the impression that she was listening.

“And she told me all these names of distant cousins of ours that I didn’t care about what I _was_ sixteen, never mind now when I’ve been in Azkaban and through a war and she just sits there smiling as though her greatest concern is how thin her porcelain is…”

“Do not underestimate her,” Dolores took the time to warn as she cast an Eavesdropping Charm on Harry and Draco. “She can be a dangerous enemy.”

“Yeah, and I don’t want to bite her arse.”

Dolores didn’t shoot him a disgusted glance because there would be no point. She nibbled a biscuit and listened as Harry, who had plopped down at a table with Draco, told him intently about his lessons with Lupin.

“…he’s a really good teacher. Most of the time. There are times that he wants to tell me about Dumbledore and Muggles, and I have to tell him that I don’t want to hear how good they are. But I know all sorts of things about history now.”

“ _Lupin._ I’ve never heard the name.”

“Before my mum, no one had ever heard the name Evans before, either.”

Before Harry’s intense, scornful gaze, Draco dropped his eyes. “You’re right, of course, Harry.”

Dolores licked at some crumbs with a smile. She had a feeling that phrase was going to become increasingly common between Draco and Harry over the next few years.

“And I’m also learning recent history from Miss Dolores, and it’s _fascinating_. There’s so much to know about who I am! I used to think I was nothing special, but now I know I am, and I know I have to learn all about it so no one can use it against me…”

“And then Cissy said, _How long has it been since you ate a proper meal, Cousin Sirius?_ And I had to look like I appreciated the monstrosities she had her house-elves make. Do you know how many ways you can _ruin_ a perfectly good roast if you just tell them to cook it until it’s completely dry?”

 _I think many conversations in the next few years will be like this, and I can live with it,_ Dolores thought, and crunched decidedly into her biscuit.


	15. Advanced Lessons

"Miss Dolores."

Dolores awoke slowly. She'd spent most of the past day awake and on high alert, because Sirius had heard a rumor from one of his disreputable friends that Dumbledore was making some other move in the Wizengamot to take Harry away. It had turned out to be nothing but a rumor, and she'd been glad to let her head finally touch her pillow.

Now Harry stood beside the bed, his eyes so big that it looked as if they hurt. Dolores snatched up her wand. Perhaps Dumbledore had decided to come through the Floo again.

But instead, Harry reached up to touch his scar and murmured, "I'm having nightmares. I--don't understand. I thought I was too young to remember what happened to my parents, but--" He swallowed. "I think that's what I'm dreaming of."

Dolores sat up. This was a different kind of emergency. "Go over to the chairs," she told Harry, and he scurried to the smaller of the two chairs in the corner. Dolores followed, pausing only to build up the fire with a wave of her wand and close the curtains against the light of the full moon. It was astonishingly bright. She was surprised it hadn't woken her on its own.

Harry sat with his head bowed and his hands worrying at the sleeves of his robe. Dolores coughed, and he did stop that, but he also gave her a look of plain despair.

Dolores made her voice calm and brisk both at once. "How certain are you that that's what you're remembering, Harry?"

"There's a flash of bright green light and a woman screaming. And before that, someone telling her to stand aside, and she says to take her. Not Harry. What else _could_ it be? It's not like I have any other memories it could be."

"The Killing Curse is green."

"That's what Sirius said."

 _I shall have a talk with Sirius._ "Why do you think you only started remembering this now?"

"I don't know. Except sometimes I had have a dream of green light and a high voice laughing at the Dursleys'. They just...didn't encourage me to talk about it."

Dolores sighed. She really hadn't thought of anything bad enough yet to inflict on the Dursleys as revenge. It was most vexing. "Then I think it's a true memory, Harry. Probably one that your mind repressed until you were ready to deal with it."

"How can I be _ready_ if I'm sitting here crying like this?" Harry rubbed his sleeve angrily over the tear on his face.

Dolores was forcibly reminded that he was a young boy after all. After seeing him handle people in the Wizengamot and Lupin, she know how great he would be, but he wasn't right now. She held out her hands.

Harry stared at her in wonder and doubt, then got off the chair and came slowly over. Dolores took his hands and swung them gently back and forth. Harry still stared at her as if she was Polyjuiced.

Maybe she wouldn't have done this before Harry came into her life, but then, there were lots of political moves she wouldn't have made either, because she didn't have the power. She only knew this was the right move now.

"Your mind has moments of readiness that only it knows," she told him. "I think that you're stronger than you give yourself credit for. You don't think that way because you grew up with _them_ , but you are."

Harry hesitated so long that Dolores thought she hadn't managed to reassure him, but then he nodded and said, "All right. Can I stay and sleep in the chair here, though? Just in case nightmares wake me up again?"

"Nonsense. You are a growing boy and must sleep flat, not with your neck crooked up at an angle." As Harry drooped, she drew back the blankets on her own huge bed, bought with one of the first surges of money she'd got from the Potter estate, and added, "Come."

Harry watched her with big eyes as he got into bed. Dolores shrugged. She had no nightmares, and she rather enjoyed surprising Harry. She lay down next to him, not touching him since he didn't seem to want that, and closed her eyes.

It was surprisingly restful, even with Harry's tendency to seem asleep and then roll over in a blitz of blankets next to her. Dolores fell into the best kind of thick, dreamless slumber, and dreamed that the front door opened and closed twice, nothing worse.

In the morning, certainly, aside from a certain manic cheerfulness in Sirius's grin that probably meant he had sought out a woman and Lupin being sick enough to excuse himself from breakfast, nothing was unusual.

Except that she had taken another step to make herself indispensable in Harry's life.

_I can do whatever I need to._

*

"I want to know who did this to him."

Dolores smiled tranquilly at the Healer in front of her, Jane Kleinan, and nodded to the chair across from her. When one had celebrity and a bit of money, Healers would come to the house instead of expecting you to go to St. Mungo's, which Dolores would admit to liking. "Please sit down, Healer Kleinan. I'll tell you about it."

Kleinan took the chair still eyeing her, as if she thought Dolores would try to get away with abusing the most famous boy in the wizarding world. Kleinan had dark hair in a severe chignon and a long neck and hard hands. She was tall enough that Dolores would have tilted her head back to look her in the face had Kleinan not sat down.

"He's had several broken bones. He's malnourished. I can tell he's been on potions that are supposed to repair that, but the breaks and starvation go so deep it's not possible." Kleinan caressed her wand. "Tell me, or I immediately contact the Wizengamot."

"His Muggle relatives abused him."

Kleinan paused. "I did hear something about that."

"Harry hasn't told me everything they did to him. But I know they made him sleep in a cupboard, they starved him, and--" Dolores shook her head. "I didn't know about the broken bones. It's possible his aunt and uncle beat him, but Harry keeps insisting they didn't, so it was probably his cousin."

"Was his cousin considerably older?"

"No, but considerably bigger, and would often chase and beat Harry with his friends. I had the impression the Muggle adults considered it 'boys' play.'"

"They would." Healer Kleinan still looked upset, but at least not like a dragon who would level the whole house. "They would. I sometimes get Muggleborns like that. Their magic conceals the break, or they do because they feel vulnerable, and then the adults are willing to accept it. Anything so as not to have to deal with a _strange_ child."

Dolores was nodding, and hiding her amusement. It seemed that even Harry's odder flights of fancy--such as wanting to help abused Muggleborn children--would have plenty of material to work on.

"If he hasn't told you the full extent of the damage, how do you know that you aren't accidentally making it worse?"

 _Calm, calm, even when she challenges you._ "You may not have heard that I have two other adults in the house with Harry every day. One is his godfather, Sirius Black, recently declared innocent. Harry tells him things he won't tell me."

"This Black won't keep the secrets from you?"

"Not if it was about Harry getting physically hurt. Believe me, he would be summoning an entire _platoon_ of Healers to personally attend him."

"And the other?"

"Harry's tutor, Remus Lupin. He teaches him in ancient history and some magical theory. Harry asks intelligent questions, and some of them are about Muggles and abused children. Lupin would tell me at once if he picked anything up from them."

Kleinan exhaled slowly and reached up to tuck a stray strand of hair back into her chignon. "All right. I thought he was incredibly close-mouthed, but what he has are different people he can talk to about different things."

"Exactly."

Kleinan remained still for another few seconds, and Dolores waited. The Healer was the sort of woman who would have left already had she come to the end of all she wanted to say. Dolores could not imagine what else needed to be discussed, but not pushing was getting her all sorts of rewards lately.

"I think the emotional abuse may have been worse than the physical."

"So I am finding," Dolores said. "They called him freak, I know that. They never told him there was such a thing as magic, even though they knew about it."

Kleinan stared. "What were they going to do when it came time for him to attend Hogwarts?"

"Perhaps not let him go. It is my experience that those kinds of Muggles rarely look ahead--they keep up their denial from day to day and imagine that will save them."

"Or they might do something worse," Kleinan said, and her fingers flexed in her lap. "There is--well, I imagine you've heard of some of the restrictions the Ministry is placing on wild valerian grown by moonlight lately?"

"Yes," said Dolores, rather thrown. But she did still get internal memos from the Ministry at times, and that was one of them. "There was a face cream that contained an accidentally high dose of it and poisoned someone?"

"Yes. Some batches are still recently-picked, of course, and the Ministry has mandated that we use them. In such ways that all wizards involved are safe, but Bagnold is getting all those accusations of wasting money lately..."

"I see." Dolores had picked up the emphasis on the word "wizards." "What kinds of things can valerian do?"

"Well, combined with certain other ingredients, make safe face creams. And combined with others, cause the sort of gentle sleep that we recommend for our patients. And for yet _others..._ " Kleinan traced her fingers down her robe as if she was playing a harp. "Cause them to violate their most deeply-held beliefs."

"Really."

"Yes. It's been used by less powerful wizards who can't cast the Unforgivables to mimic the Imperius Curse."

" _Really_ ," said Dolores, and this time they shared a smile.

"It's difficult to brew, of course," Kleinan said after reflecting on it a minute. "Nothing that can be done in a day or even a week. And I have duties at St. Mungo's that _do_ keep me rather busy, when you think about it."

"I'm sure you do," said Dolores, peaceably. If this was about money, then she could give Kleinan all she wanted. But she thought it was more about putting on a show so that anyone looking at this in a Pensieve memory could see they hadn't had an open discussion of torture.

"But sometimes I find time in the evenings. The way I found time for a house call today." Kleinan stood up and inclined her head to Dolores. "I think Harry will heal splendidly if he has multiple adults to care for him. And no other children for now," she added a second later.

"He does have friends..."

"I meant no other child sharing the house with him, splitting the adults' focus. It could remind him too much of his cousin and set back the healing."

"Oh, of course not." Dolores shook her head. "I never had the impression that either Sirius or Mr. Lupin thought much about children. Sirius has already declared Harry his heir. He doesn't seem taken with the notion of marrying and leaving his property to someone else."

"And you?"

"Of course I have made my will so that everyone goes to Harry--"

"Were you planning on marrying and having children?"

Dolores wanted to sneer, to ask Kleinan if she'd noticed the ugliness of Dolores's face and the shape of her mouth. But she was keeping her head turned studiously away, head bowed and fingers playing with her cuffs, so she probably had and just didn't want to say anything.

"No."

"Ah. Well, the attitude you have towards protecting Harry is the best thing for him right now."

Kleinan shook her hand and passed as briskly through the fireplace as Dolores had thought she would once she was done. In the meantime, Dolores leaned back and dreamed of what would happen if the Dursleys were to lose their inhibitions and act "abnormal" in public.

_It would have to be in public, of course. It's not a punishment if it happens in the privacy of their own home, even if they remember what they did in front of each other. And somewhere with lots of Muggles._

Dolores nodded. While Kleinan was arranging for the potion and the appropriate punishment for the Dursleys, Dolores thought she would do what she could to arrange the place.

*

"Ah, my dear Madam Umbridge. Might you spare me a moment of your time?"

In the seconds before Dolores turned to face Albus Dumbledore in the aisle of the small Diagon Alley shop, she thought of and discarded the notion of hitting him with her basket of tomatoes, or the bag of grapes Harry was carrying. Harry decided her against that. He was shrinking next to her, eyes wide and dismayed.

No. Harry didn't need any more notoriety than what he already had. Dolores wouldn't add to that with a brawl in public.

She smiled sweetly at Dumbledore and made sure she tested the ripeness of the watermelon she'd chosen with one finger. Then she placed it in the basket, shifting some of the tomatoes to make room for it. "Of course. What did you want to speak about?"

"Well, about Harry's future, of course." Dumbledore tried to twinkle at Harry. Harry, clearly having none of it, pressed his face into Dolores's robes like a much younger child. This once, she didn't mind. "If we could buy our food and go talk in private?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, but I do have to have the house-elves prepare a rather extravagant dinner for four tonight. I thought you meant you wanted to speak to me here and now."

People's heads were turning. Dolores didn't mind. Dumbledore had far more to lose than she did in a public confrontation.

"Harry's future will take longer to discuss than a moment."

Dumbledore was trying for dignified. Dolores went for simpering. "I know that! It's so important! But I'm trying to focus on this dinner party right now, and this is so unexpected...I suppose we could go talk in the Leaky Cauldron? As long as we can leave by four!"

It was twenty to four now. Dumbledore frowned and shook his head slowly. "One might think you didn't _want_ to discuss Harry's future, Madam Umbridge."

"I do! I do! Simply, so much time, so many commitments..."

"If you have that many, perhaps you should leave the raising of young Harry to someone else."

Dolores would have responded, and still wasn't dismayed, but at that moment Harry raised his head. His eyes brimmed with dislike as he said, more than loud enough to be heard, "I don't _want_ to be raised by you."

That could have been a disaster, but glancing around, Dolores saw the other people in the shop were with them. It wasn't the first time she'd come here with Harry, and they were used to him and her; they barely even exclaimed over his scar, anymore. That had to mean something. Among other things, that they were on her side in this.

"Harry has spoken, I'm afraid, Headmaster." Dolores reached down and let her hand rest on the back of his neck. "We should go home, now. Perhaps we can make an appointment instead of simply meeting by chance like this?"

She knew as well as Dumbledore did that it wasn't by chance. But although his eyes fastened on her with a look of dislike, he didn't have the standing to challenge her or force her into something right now.

After a tense moment, she saw Dumbledore incline his head.

"I will owl you tomorrow."

"Of course. Just in case, you should know there's a ward on my house that's impervious to Howlers. I'll charm it to let your letter through."

Dumbledore nodded and twinkled one more time at Harry and went away. Dolores took them to the front to pay for their food, deliberately not hurrying.

"I don't like him," said Harry, in a voice smaller than he'd used since she took him from the Dursleys. "I don't want him to get guardianship of me."

"I promise," Dolores said, and didn't look at him as she took the bag of grapes he was holding and let the witch at the front wave her wand over it to check weight and price in Sickles, "I will never let that happen."

And that tactic worked. By the time they were back in the street, Harry was walking tall and proud if tense, his eyes aiming straight ahead.

 _This is how one should raise the Savior of the Wizarding World,_ Dolores thought, and gloried in the stares as they went by.


	16. Dumbledore's Visit

“You remember the lines that I want you to speak, Harry?”

Harry nodded and took a step forwards, his hands folded behind his back. He bowed, and there was so much formal and correct in the motion that Dolores’s soul hummed with pride. She said nothing about it, of course. She wouldn’t want to disrupt Harry’s recollection of his lines.

Or have him get a swelled head. But the more time that passed, the less chance Dolores thought there was of that.

“Professor Dumbledore, hello. Welcome to our home. May I get you some tea?”

Dolores nodded her approval, both of the words and the way Harry said them. There was nothing to grasp onto there, no inflections or nuances that Dumbledore would be able to twist against them. They were a wall of glass, smooth and beautiful and impenetrable.

“You could call him Headmaster sometimes, too.”

“Okay,” said Harry, and tugged a moment at the high collar of his robe, until the way Dolores narrowed her eyes at him made him wince and look down. “I know, Miss Dolores, but these are _scratchy_. And they feel too small.”

Dolores raised her eyebrows and cast a spell that she used to use on her colleagues at the Ministry, mostly out of boredom. It would tell if someone was abnormally heavy, and was supposed to be used to tell if someone was smuggling in weapons or Muggle technology. But she had used it on Harry to track his weight before this.

Yes, he was heavier. And when Dolores leaned back and considered him slowly, she supposed that he looked taller, as well.

“I’m sorry,” Harry added hastily, not flinching anymore, but still watching her face with an intensity that Dolores knew came from his years with the Muggles. “I didn’t mean to sound like I was ungrateful for the robes.”

“You are not ungrateful. You are the one that the majority of the wizarding world should be grateful to. You should remember that.”

Harry swallowed some air and nodded. “All right, Miss Dolores.”

“And you’re right. You are taller and heavier than you were. I think our regime of food and potions is beginning to cure your malnourishment at last.” Dolores couldn’t brew the right potions to give Harry herself, and neither could anyone in her household, but Lupin had been able to advise her which ones were the right ones to buy.

Sometimes Dolores wondered where his obvious familiarity with conditions of malnourishment came from. Sirius had told her he’d found himself an outcast after the Potters’ deaths for insisting on Sirius’s innocence, but that didn’t explain everything.

“Do you mean—I might be as tall as my dad someday?”

Dolores had never paid enough attention to Sirius’s and Lupin’s stories about the Potter parents to be sure of exactly how tall James Potter had been, but she saw no harm in nodding her agreement. Harry looked enormously relieved.

“I would never let you go out looking malnourished, Harry.”

“I know. But that has to do with _looking_.”

Dolores opened her mouth to ask what he meant, and the fire flared. She turned around at once, no less poised and ready than her ward. Harry moved a step towards her, but that rather pleased Dolores than otherwise. As long as Harry didn’t show too much fear in front of Dumbledore, showing his dependence on her judgment would be a welcome manifestation.

Dumbledore came through wearing bright yellow robes covered with stitched patterns of purple cobwebs. Dolores wondered if there was a message there—such as that Dumbledore valued the old and crumbling over the new—but put it out of her mind. Sirius and Lupin had chosen not to be here today, both of them uncertain of their control around Dumbledore.

“Welcome, Headmaster,” Dolores said, and bowed her head in what could be a gesture of respect if you didn’t know that Dumbledore was a Legilimens and it was wise to avoid too much eye contact with him.

“Headmaster, hello. Welcome to our home. May I get you some tea?”

Harry’s voice didn’t shake, and he held out his hand for the cloak the Headmaster was wearing just as though they didn’t have house-elves. Dolores shook her head a little at him as an elf popped up behind Dumbledore. Harry widened his eyes and fell back a step.

“Ah, yes,” said Dumbledore, letting the elf take the cloak. “Some tea would make me feel warmer. It’s got cold out lately.” He made a show of rubbing his hands and leaning towards the fire.

Harry shot Dolores a bewildered glance even as he turned towards the kitchen. Dolores knew why. She had been teaching Harry not to rely on endurance or Muggle methods of doing things so much, which meant Harry knew full well that Dumbledore could simply have cast a Warming Charm.

But Dolores nodded to him to go ahead. It was obvious to her that Dumbledore wanted to get her alone, and for reasons of her own, she was inclined to allow it.

The instant Harry passed out of sight into the kitchen, Dumbledore straightened up and turned away from the fire. “You don’t know what damage you’re doing to him.”

“No, I don’t.”

Dolores waited a moment, and Dumbledore sighed and gave in to what _could_ at least seem like an innocent question on the surface. “He needs other things more than mere material comforts.”

“Well, yes. He needs to be in good health and survive. The Muggles were starving him.”

“You know boys exaggerate—”

“But a need for nourishment potions doesn’t. I am lucky that I had a friend who could tell me what potions a growing boy needed. They’re more often used for wizards who underwent a prolonged period of starvation in the wilderness, did you know? Not at all the sort of thing that most Potions brewers would expect to make for a boy Harry’s age.”

Dumbledore was still for a moment, frowning. Then he moved towards the chair Dolores had been expecting him to take all along, the huge, comfortable one that Sirius had Transfigured and decorated in Gryffindor red and gold. Since neither Dolores nor Harry wanted to sit there, it was a double win; it took nothing from them, but let him think it was a sacrifice.

“I did not know it was that bad,” he said as he seated himself.

“Very likely not.”

Dumbledore gave her a narrow glance that told her he had heard the ambiguity hidden in her words, and snorted a little. “You must know that Harry could have grown up with the Dursleys.”

“Not happily. And that does matter to me.”

“You want to use him as a political tool.”

“Even if I granted that was true,” said Dolores, with a small shrug of her shoulders that pointed out how foolish she would be to grant any such thing, “I would think his happiness was important. And you didn’t. Why is that, I wonder? Surely you know the boy would have served your cause better if you took better care of him.”

_Or was that it? Did Dumbledore want to come in like a savior and offer Harry the shining prize of our world as a reward for enduring the Dursleys?_

Harry came carefully out of the kitchen, carrying the silver tea tray with cups, kettle, sugar cubes, tongs, milk, cream, and small sandwiches balanced on it. Dolores knew the tray had been magically lightened, but it was gratifying to see Dumbledore blink and sit upright as if he would protest for a moment.

“I thought you had house-elves,” he said.

“Oh, we do,” said Harry, and placed the tray on the little table equidistant between the three chairs. Dolores thought she might be the only one to notice his sigh of relief when that was done. “But there are some chores I like doing myself.” He smiled at Dumbledore and reached for the nearest cup. “How do you like your tea, sir?”

“With lots of milk,” said Dumbledore, watching Harry. Harry kept his head shyly bowed as Dolores had told him he should when he was dealing with the Headmaster, and carefully prepared the tea. After he handed it to Dumbledore, he went over and stood behind Dolores’s chair, instead of sitting down.

Dolores patted his hand. That was something they had discussed, too, and she thought…yes, there was the narrowing of Dumbledore’s eyes she had expected. He would think this was something he could use against them.

In reality, it was tradition for the youngest member of a pure-blood family to serve the tea and remain standing until everyone had theirs. Dumbledore would get laughed out of the Wizengamot if he tried to use this as “evidence” that Dolores was an unfit guardian, assuming he could get anyone to listen to him in the first place.

“Do you want your tea, Miss Dolores?” Harry murmured, bending down near enough for her to see how much like steel his green eyes looked.

Dolores smiled at him again and stroked the nape of his neck, and let Dumbledore think what he would about _that_. “That would be very nice, Harry. If you would make sure that there’s enough sugar in it…?”

“Unlike last time?” Harry smiled at her and reached for the sugar.

“I am curious why you took Harry away from his Muggle family, only to have him continue to labor like a house-elf.”

A little flinch shivered through Harry. Dolores took her time looking up from Harry’s face, and made sure that her own face was like the glass of Harry’s earlier words. “He doesn’t labor like a house-elf.”

“Carrying that heavy tray, serving the tea—”

“I’m following traditions when I do that,” said Harry, and his voice was quiet and controlled. Not respectful, but given the provocation, Dolores would have been astonished if he’d managed _that_. His hands continued to move, carefully gathering up the right amount of sugar cubes. “Traditions I _choose_ to follow. Ones that got explained to me. Not like the tradition of abandoning me with a family who hated me.” Harry gave Dumbledore a single glance as he handed the cup to Dolores.

Dumbledore rocked back from whatever he saw in Harry’s face. Dolores sipped her tea, delighted. They hadn’t planned to reveal Harry’s strength and convictions so early, but on the other hand, Dumbledore was being stubborn. It was as well for him to understand what he was playing with.

“You mean you’re acting like a pure-blood? Not traditions that your family would have wanted you to follow. Not ones they would have _raised_ you to follow.”

Harry straightened up, and his posture was perfect. “I would thank you not to call those _disgusting_ creatures my family, Headmaster.”

“I meant your parents, Harry. They died for you. They didn’t die so that you could learn the traditions of people who hated Muggleborn witches like your mother.”

Dolores would have shaken her head if she hadn’t wanted to avoid their attention. _Now he’s done it._

“How can I know what my parents would have done? All I know is that they died _so I could live_. So I could be happy, not living with people who mistreat me.” Harry took a step forwards. “If I find value in these traditions, then I like to think they would be happy for me.”

His voice wavered a little. _He’s only seven, no matter how well he’s doing,_ Dolores thought, and decided to intervene.

“Harry is right, Headmaster. I like to think his parents would have wanted him to be happy, not merely alive. And staying with his aunt and uncle didn’t make him happy.”

“It made him _safe_.”

“According to whom, and from what?” Dolores raised her eyebrows in polite skepticism. “His relatives could still hurt him. Did you know, Headmaster, what malnutrition can do to a growing child’s body? It can affect the bones, and the eyesight.” She looked sideways at Harry’s glasses. “And the brain, even. I took him away from that. I assure you that he always has plenty to eat, here.”

Dumbledore frowned a little and shook his head. "I think you know full well what I mean, Madam Dolores." His eyes snapped to her face for a moment, but then returned to Harry. "Corruption. Spiritual corruption."

"I don't consider that a threat worth addressing."

"No?"

"No. Because you would assume that anyone whose custody he grew up in, anyone you didn't personally approve, was corrupting him."

Dumbledore tried to interject, but it was Harry who did it instead, his voice wavering up and down the scale. "How could--how could you _approve_ of the Dursleys, sir? I don't understand. Why did you--how could you _do_ that?"

Dolores gently drew Harry back with a hand on his shoulder. They'd done enough confrontation of Dumbledore, she thought, enough to wring the answers out of him if there were any. It was time for him to speak his piece. Harry understood the signal and went silent, leaning against her chair. Dolores stroked his hair in time with her own idea of soothing motions.

It took an unusually long time for Dumbledore to get his breath, or perhaps his thoughts gathered together. He drank from the teacup again, set it down, and twined one hand in his beard. Then he said in a measured, resonant voice, "I never intended for things to turn out as badly as they did."

"So you thought they would only abuse him a _little_."

"I never intended abuse!"

"But you are far-sighted enough to know it could happen. I only met Petunia Dursley for a few minutes, and I saw how horrible she was. You must have known her longer, to consider leaving Harry there at all."

“I had not—met her for many years. I first knew her as a young girl, when her sister received her Hogwarts letter and Petunia wrote to me and desperately begged to go to Hogwarts as well. Of course I had to deny her.” Dumbledore looked up abruptly. “Do you think I shouldn’t have denied her?”

“You shouldn’t have responded,” said Dolores, and shook her head. This was one of the great dangers of Muggle families having Muggleborn children: they would learn about the wizarding world and assume that world _wanted_ them, that they should have the right to it as they thought they had the right to all other parts of the earth. “But you hadn’t seen her since then? You thought she would _welcome_ a baby born to that world she could never have?”

“I thought she would welcome her nephew. Few people have the skewed view of family that you do, Miss Umbridge.”

Dolores bristled. Dumbledore had undoubtedly been doing research on her family. She opened her mouth, but Harry spoke up first.

“I do.”

Dumbledore turned towards Harry with the light glinting off his glasses again. “Please explain that, Harry.”

“I think family is what you make it.” Harry’s fingers were jerking hard at the sleeves of his robe. Dolores thought about reaching out and stilling them, but she thought Dumbledore needed to see what his decisions had driven Harry to. “And I _know_ that Aunt Petunia would never consider me family. I don’t see why I should have to think that way about her, just because my mum was her sister.”

“She is still your aunt. You have an uncle. A cousin.”

“Why does that _matter_ to you so much?” The words were wrenched out of Harry’s throat in a cry. He was shaking, staring at Dumbledore. “You can have all the aunts and uncles and cousins you want! You don’t need me to want mine!”

From the way Dumbledore’s eyes dimmed, Dolores suspected they had come to the true answer at last. Something to do with Dumbledore’s family, something to do maybe with the way he had no children and she had heard he was estranged from his brother. Yes, it made perfect sense that Dumbledore might have thought family should always be given a thousand chances, because he regretted not giving his own more.

But that didn’t give him the right to subject Harry to abuse because _he_ idealized blood family.

“Harry is my ward,” Dolores said, when there was a dangerous moment where either of them might have tried to speak. “I will fight for him. I will also always remember that his parents died. I will never speak badly of them, Headmaster. But I will badmouth the Muggles all I want.”

Dumbledore ignored her and spoke to Harry. “Would you go back if they were in danger, Harry? Would you fight to protect them?”

Harry stared at Dumbledore in the way Dolores wanted to. “ _How_ could I do that? I’m seven!”

“You might find it in your heart to protect them when you are older—”

“Why? They never protected _me_!”

“Sometimes, Harry, good people find it in their hearts to protect people they don’t personally care about. Sometimes they learn that it doesn’t matter whether those people feel gratitude or not. Sometimes they learn what matters most is being a good person, being a hero, whether or not other people ever see them that way.”

 _This matters to him,_ Dolores thought, eyeing the way Dumbledore leaned forwards and held his breath when he finished speaking. _Why?_

“Then maybe I’m not a good person.”

Dumbledore looked ready to fall over. Dolores held back the smirk she wanted to give and touched Harry gently on the shoulder. “I think that maybe we’re getting a little overheated,” she said. “Headmaster, has the purpose of your visit been accomplished? I think you can see that Harry has no desire to go back to the Muggles, and every one to stay right where he is.” She could have laughed at the look on Dumbledore’s face, but her political instincts restrained her.

“I would prefer to hear Harry say it himself.”

“I’m happy here.”

Dumbledore bowed his head in what looked like sorrowful resignation. Dolores knew better than to count on it. “I suppose I shall have to leave you here and simply tell you that my door is always open if you want to talk, Harry.”

Harry only nodded. Then they watched Dumbledore leave by the Floo, and Harry turned around in the next second and stared desperately up at her.

“I don’t have to leave and go back to them, do I? Ever? You _said_ that!”

“You don’t have to,” Dolores said softly, and stroked Harry’s hair until some of the desperate look faded from his eyes. “For his own reasons, Dumbledore wanted you there, but he’s not going to try any more kidnapping attempts. And I think he would have been most pleased if you agreed of your own free will.”

“It would never be the same, even if I did. Not that I know I’m magic now.”

Dolores smiled at him and nodded. “He will try other, political attempts.”

“I don’t care.”

At some other time, Dolores would have to correct that level of unconcern. Harry would never be the force she knew he could be if he kept expressing that kind of indifference to his own fate and the best tools to free himself from manipulation.

But for now, she allowed him to lean on her, and then they went and had lunch, and Harry petted Pardus as he sat up in his chair and ate with perfect manners.

_You’ve lost control of him now, Dumbledore. Forever._


	17. Skirting Secrets

Sirius had been staring at the same letter for five minutes now, and Dolores judged that she had given him more than ample time to react to it.

“Is something wrong, Black?” she asked, and made sure to keep her voice supremely unconcerned as she spread marmalade across her toast. Currently, she had more than enough to do, keeping an eye on Harry and making sure that he was learning the _proper_ amount of marmalade and butter to spread on his food. She didn’t need Black to have a mental crisis as well.

Sirius started horribly and glanced up, shaking his head. “No, nothing!” he said, in a bright tone that rattled on Dolores’s nerves. He laughed and reached out, his hand almost knocking over the glass jar of marmalade. Dolores rescued it, keeping her eyes firmly on his face. “Nothing you need to worry about.”

That probably meant it concerned some matter of the Black inheritance. Dolores leaned back and studied him. “You are certain?”

“Of _course_!”

“Nothing that can affect Harry?”

Black never _could_ lie, and that ridiculous, wide-eyed sideways glance said so. But he immediately focused back on her and increased the brilliance of his smile, as if it had ever worked on her. If he _did_ think it did, Dolores thought him blinder than Dumbledore. “No, no! How could a matter of my family affect Harry?”

“Perhaps the Ministry objected to you making him the heir to the Black estates.” Dolores was not sure that would be a bad thing. On the one hand, making Harry Sirius’s heir tied Sirius more closely to them.

On the other hand, Sirius had enough other reasons to be loyal, and the wealth might give Harry a most undesirable independence.

Sirius contorted his mouth into a happy grin. “Yes, that’s it. Only a little problem that I’ll have handled as soon as I can get to the Ministry.” He stood up, stuffed some scones into his pockets—Dolores grimaced; he was not Harry—and reached out to ruffle Harry’s hair and Pardus’s fur in the same motion. “Anyway. Have to run.”

He took off running, and didn’t slow even when Dolores made the small cough that was successful in halting him most of the time. He just waved a hand at her and kept streaking, plowing through the doorway and, from the sound of it, through the Floo a second later.

Dolores turned to observe Lupin. He had been sitting close enough to read the letter over Sirius’s shoulder, and his behavior might give her some clue of what it was about.

Lupin did look a little cooler and paler than usual, sipping his tea with a cup that trembled, but that was not enough evidence to decide one way or the other what letter Black had received. Dolores shook her head and regretfully put aside the concern for now. “What lesson will you be giving Harry today, Mr. Lupin?”

Lupin looked up with a smile that strengthened as she watched. “Evidence for the ancient wizarding communities of Atlantis.”

“You are not going in chronological order.”

“Harry is such a strong pupil that I don’t need to. I go by his questions, and when he doesn’t understand something, then he knows he can ask me and I’ll explain.”

Dolores paused, then nodded. She had to admit that Harry was much more intelligent than many young boys she might have adopted, and able to decide on the progress of his own education. Dolores would interfere only if he seemed to be wandering too far afield from the Ministry-approved topics. “And do you enjoy that process, Harry?”

“Yes, I do.” Harry spoke up in the firm voice she had encouraged him to use lately, and used his napkin instead of his fingers to mop the crumbs off his chin. “And I sure enjoy it more than I ever did the Muggle primary school.”

“That is to be expected. It was Muggle.”

Lupin looked a little concerned, the way he often did when Dolores disparaged Muggles, but Harry nodded ferociously. “And there’s no Dudley here to bully me and keep the other kids from being friends with me.”

“Will that ever happen again, Harry?”

“No. When I go to Hogwarts, people are going to _beg_ to be my friend.”

 _It will be Slytherin for him, nothing else,_ Dolores thought contentedly, and exchanged a smile with Harry. Lupin again looked concerned, but Dolores didn’t think that mattered. In fact, by showing that Harry was somewhat independent from Lupin’s influence as his teacher, it was a good thing.

_I am raising a prodigy._

*

“This is bad. It’s very bad.”

Dolores paused. She had thought Sirius was asleep already, because he had come back so late and looked even more frazzled than when he’d left. If it was a matter of the Black inheritance, it must be complicated beyond imagining. Perhaps the goblins were involved. She had felt more than enough sympathy, and arranged to leave him alone, rather than questioning him.

But now he was crouching in front of a Floo in the sitting room that she used for Harry’s lessons in recent wizarding history, and talking to someone through the fire that Dolores could not see. She eased a bit closer.

“Why did you contact _me_ , Black?”

Dolores cocked her head. She had thought she knew that voice, for a moment, but no, she did not, other than that it was gruff, and male. She still couldn’t see the face in the flames, either.

“Because you’re one of the few who knows the truth and still might stand up against Albus.” Sirius closed his eyes and ran a hand through his wild hair. Dolores barely held back the temptation to cluck her tongue. She had spent so much time staring at him disapprovingly so he would stop that deplorable habit and style his hair neatly, and now it appeared it was coming back the minute he lost his composure.

“Why _should_ I stand up against Albus?”

“You told me once that you thought he was overstepping his power as Head of the Wizengamot. And that’s truer now than ever, with the questioning he’s going through. And the loss of his influence.”

“Well…yes, I do believe that. But this is a private matter. I don’t see why I should interfere.”

“Because the Ministry gave custody to _Umbridge_ , not him!” Sirius pounded a fist on the hearth. Dolores blinked. She certainly had never thought he would be that fierce in defense of _her_. “And because you know full well he wants custody of Harry so that he can keep politically-maneuvering around behind the scenes.”

“He might know better than the Ministry.”

“If you really believe that, why you are still working for them?”

There was silence from the fire. Dolores tried again to remember if she’d ever heard a voice like that at the Ministry. She didn’t think so, but then, there were plenty of Departments that she hadn’t interacted with on a regular basis.

“Say your piece, Black.”

Sirius waved a letter. Squinting, Dolores made out the creases in it. She thought it might be the same one he had received that morning. “He’s _threatening_ me! Threatening to release the information that—well, _you_ know what would happen if that information fell into the wrong hands.”

 _I don’t. And I want to know_.

“And you think this is only politically motivated? That he wants Potter back under his control?”

“I _know_ it is, Moody. Of course it is. He isn’t doing this out of some disinterested motive or the purity of his heart. If you won’t help me, then he’ll probably gain some control of Harry back, too.”

 _Moody!_ Of course Dolores knew of the famous Auror, although she didn’t think she had ever seen him at close quarters, which would be the reason she hadn’t recognized his voice. She hadn’t known he had a connection to Dumbledore that went beyond the one any Auror would have with the Head of the Wizengamot, though. This was immensely intriguing.

“Are you sure that Potter’s in the best hands?”

“I don’t always trust Dolores, but I do know that she wants to teach Harry about the world that should always have been his. And she _did_ rescue him from the Muggles.”

 _How interesting to know that you don’t always trust me, Sirius._ Dolores shifted a little and made sure that her shadow wasn’t falling into the room in such a way that someone could see it from the Floo. Moody was famously paranoid. She was amazed he hadn’t already insisted that Sirius ward the room.

“I’m not going to discuss this with you in her house, Black,” said Moody a moment later. Dolores sighed in disappointment. “If you think that this is something I need to take a hand in, then meet me in the Ministry at one-o’clock tomorrow. Choose a question only _you_ would know the answer to and owl it and the answer to me tonight.”

Sirius sighed and seemed as if he was about to fall over. “Thanks, Moody. You don’t know how much this means to me.”

“I think I do,” said Moody. “Not that _you_ ought to fall victim to this kind of tactic.” And the fire puffed out, just before Sirius sighed again and got up to walk towards the door.

Dolores took a silent step back, wondering if she ought to tell Sirius that she’d heard or not. It seemed like good blackmail material, but on the other hand, he had lied about the letter having nothing to do with Harry’s custody. Perhaps it would be better to confront him now and get it over with.

Something abruptly slammed into her backside. Dolores whipped out, wand rising in her hand too late. She shouldn’t need to be as paranoid as Moody to defend herself in her own household!

It was only Harry and Pardus, who had been chasing each other—Dolores was not sure which one had been in front—down the corridor. Harry immediately grabbed Pardus and stood there with his head bowed as if afraid that she would take his cat away, shivering.

“I’m sorry, Miss Dolores,” he whispered. “I thought Pardus had a mouse, and I was trying to take it away from him before he choked, and—”

From the sound of rustling in the sitting room, Sirius had retreated from the door, and was warned now. Dolores sighed and put her wand away. “What have I said about running in the house, Harry?”

“Not to do it.”

Dolores curled a finger beneath his chin and tilted his head up; with his eyes on the floor like that, he couldn’t see the message waiting for him in her face. “Then you’re _not to do it again_. If I catch you doing that, there won’t be a chance of Pardus catching mice because there won’t be any more Pardus here. Understood?”

Harry nodded, his eyes wide and his face still. He was getting better at controlling his emotions, she could see that. Not so long ago, he would have burst out crying at the pronouncement. “Yes, Miss Dolores.”

“What’s all this? Does Dolores think she can take away the kitten _I_ got you?”

Dolores turned to face Sirius. He was smiling, but his cheeks still had a tinge of pallor to them. Dolores hid her frustration and gave Sirius a faint smile. “If Harry disobeys the rules because of a pet, then it must go.”

“But it’s _his_ kitten.”

“Living in my house, subsisting on my bounty and invitation, much the way you and Mr. Lupin do. Or did you forget that part?”

“You wouldn’t get rid of Sirius, right?” Harry spun around to face her abruptly, his hands tightening on Pardus until the kitten squirmed and let out a little squall. “You wouldn’t be that mean!”

“I would not get rid of him _the same way_ I would get rid of a kitten. But I cannot have him encouraging you to undesirable behavior.”

Harry ducked his head. Sirius, still looking a little pale, cleared his throat and shook his head. “I hope you don’t mean that threat, Dolores. Because in that case, I might have to go to Dumbledore and tell him that you’re an _undesirable_ guardian.”

Before Dolores could even summon up her outrage, Harry did it for her. He faced Sirius and stared intensely as he said, “You wouldn’t do that.”

“Pup, you can’t want to get rid of Pardus!”

“I don’t want to go to Dumbledore,” Harry countered, his voice so thick and hot that Dolores was reminded of a fire burning underground. “No matter what happens. Even if Miss Dolores starts starving me like _they_ did. Take me with you when you run. But don’t take me to Dumbledore.”

“I would never do that,” said Dolores, lost somewhere in the midst of her shock.

“ _If_ you did,” said Harry, and gave her a glance that had something wild lingering in the back of it.

Before Dolores could ask him where this had come from, Sirius broke in. “I don’t want to go to Dumbledore. But I want to keep you safe.”

“Dumbledore doesn’t want that! Or he never would have left me with the Dursleys in the first place!”

“I just _said_ I wasn’t talking about taking you to Dumbledore!”

“You said it at first.”

Dolores eased slowly back and left Harry confronting Sirius in the middle of the corridor. She might not understand everything that was going on here, but she did know that Harry could fight this battle on his own.

Sirius gave one of those tugs at his black hair that she so hated, and a rough sigh. “All right, that was a stupid thing to say—”

“Yes.”

Dolores fought the smile off her face. That was as inappropriate a reaction as everything Harry had done, so far.

“But I do want you to be safe, pup. And happy. And to have what you want.” Sirius glared at Dolores. “I don’t want to see her get rid of your kitten any more than I want to see her starve you.”

Harry was silent for a second, stroking Pardus’s fur. Then he said, “I know, Sirius. But I don’t think she’s going to seriously do it.” He glanced over his shoulder at Dolores. “Are you, Miss Dolores?”

“I will get rid of him if you can’t handle having a pet. And I have told you about the conditions I have on letting you keep him before.”

Harry ducked his head and murmured, “Yes, Miss Dolores. I won’t—I won’t let him get out of control again.”

“See that you don’t,” said Dolores, with a firm nod, and then turned and swept down the corridor, watching over her shoulder with one eye. Sirius was grinning at Harry and shaking his head. At least he didn’t seem inclined to pursue either the argument _or_ the notion of reporting Dolores to Dumbledore.

“She can be pretty strict, huh, pup?” Sirius was saying just before Dolores turned the corner.

Dolores sighed. The chance was gone now to ask Sirius about the letter, and although she could intercept the owl he’d send to Moody, it would probably give nothing more than the information the paranoid Auror had demanded to identify Sirius tomorrow. How inconvenient that Harry had run into her and made her reveal her presence outside the room to Sirius like that.

Dolores paused when she thought that. Could Harry have done that on _purpose?_ Somehow known what the letter contained and that he would want to prevent Dolores from cornering Sirius or overhearing too much, so he had run down the corridor and bumped into her on purpose?

A second later, Dolores snorted. No. Sirius had not communicated with Harry since breakfast that morning, she was sure. And Harry was growing into a smart, manipulative young man, but not that skilled.

Not yet.


	18. Past Murder, Present Pain

Dolores waited patiently until Sirius left for the Ministry. Then she went and confronted Lupin.

He had his own room at the top of the house now, because it was unrealistic for him to leave all the time when he spent meals with them and lectured Harry so often through the week. He still started a little when he opened the door and saw her. “Miss Umbridge,” he said, and stood back to bow her in.

Dolores deliberately didn’t look around when she went in. She knew she would see a mixture of her own furniture and Lupin’s old things, and the effect would be upsetting. She concentrated on looking him in the eye instead. “I want to know what Sirius went to the Ministry for this afternoon.”

Lupin didn’t blink. “I think he went to see Moody.”

Dolores paused, then smiled a little, accepting the check. She sat down on a chair that didn’t wobble too badly beneath her. “Perhaps I should ask you what that letter he got at breakfast the other day was about, then.”

“You would be better off asking Sirius about that.”

“Who would be better off?” Dolores watched Lupin out of the corner of her eye as he walked restlessly around the room, touching his dusty things as if he had never seen them before. _Not as cool as he pretends._ “Me? You? Sirius? Certainly not Harry.”

Lupin hunched his shoulders. “It had nothing to do with Harry.”

“I don’t think he would have rushed off like that if it had nothing to do with Harry. At the very least, it had to do with a matter of the Black inheritance, and that concerns Harry, since Sirius plans to leave everything to him.”

Lupin’s shoulders dropped again. “If you already know what the letter is about, why are you asking me?”

“I know what he _told_ me the letter is about. I thought I might learn something else by talking with you.”

“Such as?”

“The truth.”

Lupin actually swayed. _Swayed_. Dolores had to wonder how he’d survived before he entered the sheltered environment of her house. “I don’t think I can help you,” he whispered, his eyes darting away from her while he licked his lips as if he had something delicious on them. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry you can’t help, or sorry that you can help and choose not to?”

Lupin’s gaze snapped back to her as if pulled, and then he immediately avoided her eyes again. “I—you don’t need to say that.”

“Perhaps not. If you will speak to me of your own free will.”

“I’m—late to my lesson with Harry.”

Dolores let Lupin bustle around picking up the books and maps and parchments that he considered indispensable to his class with Harry, and then stood up and got in the way with a leisurely motion when Lupin tried to leave the room. As she had thought would happen, Lupin froze in place, breathing harshly through his nose, rather than try to shove her aside.

“Please,” Lupin whispered.

“I wouldn’t have to do this if you and Sirius weren’t keeping secrets from me,” Dolores said reasonably. “Anything that touches on my custody of Harry, or the ways that I can keep him safe, impacts his future severely. I’d think that you would _want_ to keep him safe, instead of me ignorant.”

Lupin gave a whimper and stared at her as if he had never heard anyone speak to him sternly. Dolores kept standing there. When he had first come to tutor Harry, he had been so thin that he’d looked as if a strong wind would knock him over. Now she wondered if his thinness had only been the outer sign of his inner weakness.

“Please, Miss Umbridge.”

“No, Mr. Lupin. I need to know what it was.”

Lupin shivered and finally set the books down. “When I was in Hogwarts,” he said, still trembling at the floor, “I did something that nearly got another student killed. Dumbledore covered it up for me. It was partially because I was a Gryffindor and this other student was a Slytherin, and, well, Albus has always been biased towards his own House.” He gave her another flickering glance.

Dolores fought not to curl her lip. She hoped that Harry would end up in Ravenclaw if it turned out that he wasn’t suited well for Slytherin—though, at the moment, she couldn’t imagine why he wouldn’t be. Anything but a House that loudly proclaimed themselves to be above rivalry and revenge, then did things like _this_.

“It’s possible that I could still be arrested if that information were to come out.” Lupin swallowed in a way that made his throat bob. “For attempted murder. And yes, maybe it would make Dumbledore look bad for keeping it a secret, but it was privately handled between me and him and the Slytherin student. The former Slytherin is—not well-regarded. It would be essentially my word against Dumbledore’s, and there are still a lot of people who would believe him over me.”

Dolores nodded, lost in wonder at Dumbledore’s cunning for a moment. Well, and his audacity. “And he made a threat to Sirius to reveal this information?”

“Yes.” Lupin clenched his hand in his hair. “He went to meet with Moody because he thought that, maybe, he could persuade Moody to make Dumbledore keep quiet.”

“How?”

“Moody has been Dumbledore’s friend for a long time. He knows some things about him that aren’t—common knowledge. And he’s a respected Auror. His word would have more weight than mine or Sirius’s.”

“Blackmail against blackmail.” Dolores had to laugh. “Sirius is more practical than I ever thought he was.”

Lupin gave her a glance that was perilously close to being one of dislike. “Of course _you_ would think that.”

“Why me?”

“You were a Slytherin.”

Dolores snorted. It was one thing to think constantly of Hogwarts Houses in relation to Harry, who hadn’t gone through the school yet. But it was another entirely for Lupin to think of them in relation to _her_. “When Sirius says something like that, I assume it was because he was in Azkaban. But what is your excuse? The same one you had for nearly murdering a Slytherin student when you were both teenagers?”

Lupin turned as pale as rice. He had to stagger sideways and sit down in a chair. “What—you have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I know that you’ve confessed to attempted murder, and this is something that means Dumbledore may be able to blackmail you.” Dolores turned in a slow half-circle, eyes locked on Lupin’s. “So tell me why I should trust you around the child I’m raising.”

Lupin gulped and raked his thin brown hair so that it stood up almost like Harry’s. “It was a mistake. I would never do something like that now.”

“Not even around a Slytherin?”

“Of course not.” Lupin’s face was taut with anguish that, frankly, Dolores didn’t understand. If this attempted murder was something he hadn’t wanted to do, or that he regretted, then he shouldn’t have done it. “For one thing, I acknowledge that you are—something good that has happened to Harry, if not the guardian I would have chosen for him.”

Dolores inclined her head graciously.

“For another, I’m not blind. Sirius still doubts it, but—even apart from the way you’re raising him, there’re Slytherin traits in Harry. That’s where he’ll end up unless he changes drastically in the next four years.”

“Very good, Lupin,” Dolores said softly. “So. Do you think Sirius’s blackmail, Moody’s blackmail, will work?”

“It should. If Moody agrees to help. I don’t know if he will. Sirius hasn’t spoken to him at all in the past seven years, of course. And even though he’s been declared innocent now, Moody has those bloody Auror instincts. He tends to distrust people who have got into trouble once.”

“Then I won’t worry about it for now.” Dolores trailed her hand down the railing of a chair that was, frankly, too heavy and dark to fit with the rest of the room. Then again, it was Lupin’s problem if he wanted to show off his lack of taste for every visitor he had. “But if Dumbledore threatens Harry again, _I_ will take care of it.”

“How? You don’t have the blackmail on Dumbledore that Moody does, and I know you’ve quarreled with Lucius Malfoy. He’s the only one who could convincingly argue with Dumbledore now.”

Dolores smiled a little. “How limited your knowledge of politics is, Mr. Lupin,” she said, and opened the door, and slipped downstairs.

*

“There’s something I don’t understand.”

Dolores nodded encouragingly to Harry. He took more notes during her lessons on recent wizarding history than he did when he was in Lupin’s lessons, and talked less. All questions were to be encouraged. “What is that?”

“How did everyone get to know what happened to me that night?” Harry pulled his fringe up with a yank that made Dolores look at him chidingly. But Harry didn’t recognize the glance, instead fuming privately along. “My scar, and how I supposedly defeated Voldemort, and the rest of it. _How_?”

“Some of it came out around the time of Sirius’s arrest, I imagine.” Dolores paused and thought back to her memories of the night after that Halloween one. “But you are right, before that was the news that you were the Boy-Who-Lived. I don’t know who first called you that. But I have only one good guess who would have told other people about the shape of your scar and the supposed destruction of You-Know-Who.”

Harry’s eyes darkened. “Dumbledore.”

“He _was_ one of the first on the scene after the death of your parents and the destruction of the house,” said Dolores delicately. “That much I discovered when looking up the records of why Sirius never had a trial.”

“I hate him.”

Dolores came over and crouched down in front of Harry at the small desk he used in the schoolroom. Harry stared at her. Dolores gently stroked his hair and told him, “It’s all right to dislike him all you want. But hating him is dangerous without the power to strike back at him. And you don’t have that right now.”

“I thought you said I had that power because of my name. And we drove him away when he came and tried to tell you you weren’t doing a good job as my guardian.”

“That is rather different,” Dolores said. Perhaps she could see his faith in her as a touching thing rather than a sign of weakness. Yes, the more she thought about it, the more she decided she could. “We managed to keep him from taking control of you again, yes. But that is not the same as really driving him away and making him give up. You sound like you want to do that.”

“I only said I hated him.”

“But when you hate someone, you have to be prepared to go against them with all your heart. Are you ready to do that yet?”

Harry paused, his hand twitching a little. He stared at Dolores, and then at her hands, as if they would explain something. “You said that _you_ hate him.”

“I hate what he stands for more than I hate him,” Dolores admitted with a small shrug. “He’s interfered with the passage of completely relevant and mild legislation in the Wizengamot because it didn’t suit his ideals. Mostly having to do with introducing Muggleborns to the wizarding world early.”

“But that sounds like a…good thing.”

“Yes, but it would shorten the time they spend with their Muggle family without a sense of estrangement between them. Dumbledore, as I believe you have noticed, is a huge proponent of blood family. He was unwilling to, as he said, ‘increase their sense of strangeness without cause.’” Dolores examined her nails for a moment, but also watched Harry closely out of the corner of her eye. What she had said, including Dumbledore’s objection to the legislation, was completely true.

But how Harry reacted to it would be a combination of his own feelings and how well Dolores had explained the situation.

“So he thinks that there’s always going to be a difference between a Muggleborn and their family once they learn about magic,” Harry summarized, his face blank.

Dolores nodded.

“Then why—why did he have _so much trouble_ believing me when I told him about the way the Dursleys treated me?”

Dolores reached out and gently laid a hand on the back of Harry’s neck. He was close to shouting, and that was never a good role for anyone, but worse for a future leader of the wizarding world. “Likely because he knew the Dursleys knew about magic already. He thought you wouldn’t ever suffer that estrangement.”

“And that was more important to him than checking on me. Or checking that they hadn’t started hating magic before he placed me there.”

Dolores shook her head. “I don’t think it would ever have occurred to him that they _could_ have started hating magic. To him, magic is a wondrous thing except when it’s used to hurt Muggles. They might have envied you—he could understand that—or feared _you_. But not magic itself. And not hatred.”

Harry was silent for a second, his eyes on the floor. Dolores waited. It wouldn’t be long until he spoke, and a lot depended on the question he would ask next.

To her surprise, though, it wasn’t one of the questions on her long list of possible ones. He tilted his head back and stared her fiercely in the face. “You said I shouldn’t hate Dumbledore because hating someone means you have to be prepared to go against them with all your heart. Do you think the Dursleys—hated me that way?”

Dolores blinked, but the answer was obvious, and true beyond any reach of manipulation, like the facts about the legislation that Dumbledore had opposed. “Yes, I do.”

Harry nodded slowly. His fingers tapped on the table next to him. He stilled them before Dolores could reach over to do that for him. He breathed shallowly, but not in a way that would make him faint. So Dolores simply sat back and watched.

“I don’t want to hate anyone like that. But I think I might hate Dumbledore like that anyway.”

“Then you work long-term. You work yourself into a position where you can show everyone how stupid it is to only think of blood family all the time. You show everyone that you’re a family with me, and Sirius, and Mr. Lupin.” Dolores would probably never think of Lupin as part of the family, not with how weak he was, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t part of Harry’s.

“You think that will convince people?”

“Maybe not everyone will be able to see it. But you have the power of your name on your side, and the power of someone who was placed with abusive Muggles and is recovering nicely. You’re the living counterexample of everything Dumbledore wants to support or prove.”

Harry smiled a little. “Then I want to do that.”

“Be a living counterexample?”

“And learn what I need to. Do I need to learn about blood family and the Muggleborn children who are abused? And do I need to learn about law and history? Then let me do that.” Harry was staring at Dolores as if he thought she might stand in his way along with Dumbledore.

“All right,” said Dolores. “But it will take years longer and much more studying than you might be picturing right now.”

“I can do that. I know that I’m never going back to the Dursleys’ again, so the years don’t seem so long anymore.”

Dolores blinked, and then asked, “Were you looking forward to a certain age when you planned to leave them?”

Harry bobbed his head, his eyes glittering with fervor. “When I was eighteen, I was going to walk out the door and never look back. I didn’t care if I had to leave with the clothes on my back. I didn’t even care if I had to leave _naked_.”

_And, of course, since he didn’t know about Hogwarts, he had no idea that salvation might be much closer than that, when he turned eleven…_

Once again, Dolores was left in slight shock over what might have been, the way that Dumbledore’s love of blood family raising blood children would have interfered with Harry’s life if she’d left him there. Perhaps it would have been permissible for someone else, some Muggleborn with no fame, but this was _Harry Potter._

“You’ll never have to leave like that here,” she said, and touched Harry’s shoulder.

Harry smiled at her, and his eyes shone with determination enough to drive him on to the heights of politics. “I know, Miss Dolores.”


	19. Needing Careful Handling

“And I think it’s all sewn up.”

Dolores paused on the other side of the doorway into the dining room. This one had no door, so Lupin and Sirius could have seen her if they turned around. But neither of them turned. Lupin was facing Sirius, who was waving his arms around and grinning so hard that it seemed to change the tenor of the room.

Harry stopped in his walk beside her. Dolores looked down and saw how wistful his face looked. “What are you thinking?” she murmured.

Harry started a little and shook his head. “Only—only that I hope Dumbledore doesn’t do anything to make Sirius or Lupin have to leave,” he muttered, and reached down to tickle Pardus, who was walking beside him, batting at one of his laces.

“He will not. It does seem to have been handled,” Dolores said, and walked into the dining room.

Sirius turned to face them and greeted even Dolores a lot more cheerfully than he usually did. “You’ll never guess what happened!”

“Likely not,” said Dolores, and motioned for Harry to take the seat across from her and open his napkin across his lap. He did, although his eyes were wide with fascination and he looked at Sirius as if he thought the story would involve blood and murder.

 _Hopefully it only involves that one attempted murder,_ Dolores thought, and reached for the honey.

“Sometimes political battles are just as exciting as spell battles,” Sirius was explaining to Harry, still waving his arms. “Dumbledore wanted to _tell_ on Remus over here. And he went too far. He said that he would accuse him of something that wasn’t his fault, and then he told me that he would tell _everyone_ unless I gave him custody of you!”

Dolores sipped at her tea, and wondered. Dumbledore knew that Dolores and not Sirius had legal custody of Harry. Of course he could have challenged her, which was one reason Dolores took so much effort to make Sirius happy, but he couldn’t hand Harry over to Dumbledore without a second thought.

 _Why not make the threat to me? Perhaps I would not have responded the way he wanted. I might have let Lupin’s past come out, or simply kicked him out of the house._ Lupin was a good tutor, but not worth losing custody of Harry.

“What did you do?” Harry was leaning forwards with his eyes sparkling. Dolores looked at him, and then away. He almost never looked at her in that manner.

_Then again, I am not meant to be the “fun” one. I am meant to be the one who will teach him how to survive these political battles, which Sirius cannot do._

“I found a friend who knew certain things about Dumbledore, and threatened to tell on _him_.” Sirius folded his arms and nodded importantly. “And you know what? I don’t think my friend would have done it, but he knew _you_ were involved. He told me that he hates to think of you shuffled from one custody situation to another.” He reached out and smiled at Harry, gently touching his hair. “He threatened Dumbledore for us, and told him to hold his hand. For us. For you.”

Harry paused for a long second, and Dolores wondered why. He no longer seemed to despise the idea of blackmail, at least the times they had talked about it.

But then Harry said, “Is this friend of yours going to want something in return?”

Sirius laughed like a bark. “Why would he? He’s a friend! And he was outraged over what Dumbledore was doing!”

“But now he knows whatever secret Dumbledore was going to tell everyone about Remus,” said Harry, with a quick glance at Lupin. “And I owe him something. So maybe he wants an autograph from me, or the chance to appear in public with me. But maybe he wants something more than that.”

Dolores concealed her smile behind a sausage. _There speaks my teaching._

“Well, no, Moody wouldn’t demand anything like that from you,” Sirius said, blinking and studying Harry as if he was worried about him. “I mean—he just wouldn’t. You can probably assume that everything is fine unless he specifically contacts me again.”

Harry watched him, skeptically. Then he shrugged and went back to eating his porridge. “All right.”

Not really all right, of course. Dolores knew the signs that Harry had decided to put off his questions until a later time, when Moody might prove to be a threat or not. Then again, he obviously knew better than to try and make Sirius understand that.

“You are sure Dumbledore is contained?” Dolores took the chance to murmur to Sirius as they were leaving the dining room.

Sirius gave her the kind of look that meant his mind was already somewhere else. “What? Oh, yeah. Of course. He’s not going to try anything like that again.”

“Then I wonder if it would be worthwhile introducing Harry to a few other pure-blood families,” Dolores said, her mind racing ahead. “The Malfoys are all very well, but they think too highly of themselves. Who would you suggest?”

“Um. The Longbottoms?” Sirius shrugged when she glared at him. “Most of the people I know aren’t pure-bloods, honestly. Or they don’t have children. Or they’re dead.”

Dolores nodded slowly. “I was thinking, perhaps, of the Parkinsons and the Zabinis.” She had also thought of the Goyles and the Crabbes, but even if those families’ fathers had not been suspected Death Eaters, she would have disdained their children’s fitness as companions for Harry. Too simple and too stupid, from what she had seen of those boys when they accompanied their fathers to the Ministry.

“Um. Really?”

“The Zabinis were not Death Eaters, and the Parkinsons weren’t, either,” said Dolores mildly. “What do you have against them?”

“The large number of very _dead_ husbands that Mrs. Zabini has?”

“You can’t think she would target Harry? He’s too young.”

Sirius gave her such an incredulous glance that Dolores did think she had done something wrong for one moment, and then his face turned tired. “Of course. Of course you would see it that way, that I’m objecting because I might think Mrs. Zabini is going to target Harry.”

“You could tell me why else you’re objecting. That would be a courtesy.”

Her father had told her once that she got too frozen and polite when she was angry. But Sirius himself didn’t seem angry. He shook his head. “Because she’s evil? Because I don’t think we should expose Harry to someone evil so young?”

“You didn’t mind about Narcissa until we had that split with her.”

“She’s my cousin.” For the first time since he’d settled the matter of the letter, Sirius looked uncomfortable.

“But she’s the wife of an accused Death Eater.” Dolores folded her hands and found herself taking lessons from Harry rather than the other way around, trying to look small and meek and harmless. “I don’t think we can say one family like that is all right and then banish another that didn’t even have the accusation laid against them.”

Sirius grimaced and looked away. “All I can say is that _I_ won’t be drinking any tea when Mrs. Zabini’s around.”

Dolores smiled. She could, at least, be gracious in victory, another thing her father had never understood. “She would have to marry you first to be interested in getting rid of you.”

Sirius shuddered all over and muttered something about needing to be elsewhere. Dolores studied him as he stalked away, and shook her head a little. Sirius could think that she was an unfit guardian all he wanted.

But he would have been little better himself. In fact, probably worse, always seeking after some kind of political stability without compromise that didn’t exist.

*

The official letter from the Ministry didn’t make Dolores react much at first. If nothing else, Sirius was across the table, drooping over his tea, and Harry was quietly sneaking pieces of food to Pardus under the mistaken impression that she wouldn’t notice. She didn’t want to attract their attention right now.

But when she opened it, she saw the seal of the Wizengamot on the bottom of the paper, and paused. Then she looked up and read the request.

There was a time, before Harry had come into her life and she had taken on the responsibility of being a good guardian, that Dolores would have shrieked in pure frustration at the news contained in the letter. As it was, she read it through twice, to make sure that she understood all the implications, and laid it down.

“Sirius?”

He muttered something and took another long sip of tea. There were always a few mornings a month when he seemed tired, and Lupin didn’t come to breakfast on those days. Dolores didn’t really care what they did with each other at night—anything from lovemaking to blood sports could have been going on there—as long as they kept it away from Harry. So far, they appeared to be doing so.

“Are you absolutely sure that your cousin doesn’t know anything about you bringing Draco to Diagon Alley to meet Harry?”

Harry’s head came up at once, the way it always did at the sound of his name, his eyes wide and worried. Dolores smiled at him and he seemed to calm down a little, but he sat still, ignoring the way Pardus swatted at his hand.

“I’m sure,” Sirius said, gulping the rest of his tea with a huge tilt of his head. “Why would she let me keep doing it if she knew?”

“Then explain this request from Lucius Malfoy to let the Wizengamot reevaluate Harry’s custody because we were putting his son in danger, please,” said Dolores, and pushed the letter across the table to Sirius.

Sirius read through it with his jaw dropping. Harry, meanwhile, sat motionless, ignoring even the way Dolores leaned the side of her hand against his bowl of porridge. Dolores frowned. She would have to work with Harry on obedience and not letting startling things take him off-guard.

“The son of a _bitch_!”

 _Well, he’s awake now,_ Dolores thought, and sighed a little as she watched Sirius throw his teacup and storm around near the table and yank at the cloth. The plates and dishes on it were too heavy to pull off, luckily, or the house-elves would have been dealing with even more of a mess than they currently had.

“Sit down, Sirius,” she finally said, when she considered that it had gone on long enough.

“Cissy told Lucius, and Lucius figured out a way he could use this to his political advantage.” Sirius flopped sideways into his chair, his arms folded and his lip projecting enough that Dolores could have put a saucer on it. “How _dare_ he?”

"He did it because he saw a chance."

It was Harry's tone more than his words that gave Dolores pause. Harry was sitting with his arms folded and his own lip sticking out, but he didn't look petulant. He looked as if he was going to swoop down on someone.

_And somehow, I think he will more hawk than songbird._

"Don't know what you mean by that, pup."

"He feels insulted. Miss Dolores told me that. So of course he would take a chance at revenge if he saw it. Wouldn't you?"

Sirius only stared at Harry as if he'd never seen him before. Dolores might have said something, but she decided she would leave this battle up to Harry. It might be good for Sirius to learn to respect his godson a little more.

"But--why would he want to take revenge now? For what? He could have gone after me the instant Cissy told him!"

"But he might have heard something about Dumbledore wanting custody back. So he strikes at a point when we're weak." Harry only shrugged, and matched Sirius's incredulity with his own. "I mean, wouldn't anyone do that?"

"We're not weak!"

"Dumbledore wanted custody. Now he does. He could have spread rumors." Harry hesitated and looked over at her then, and Dolores only shook her head a little. She didn't know for certain whether rumors of Dumbledore's attempted blackmail had spread, or whether it was only that many people in the Ministry remembered the way he had challenged Dolores in front of the Wizengamot. "Or maybe it's just good timing. But yeah, Lucius wanted revenge. So he took it."

"Are you like that, pup?"

"Like what?"

"Vengeful."

Harry seemed to shrink in his seat, something that made Dolores want to cuff Sirius alongside the head. "Against the Dursleys, maybe," he whispered.

"Well, if it was just against them, then maybe it would be okay." Sirius leaned across the table to ruffle Harry's hair. "Just remember who you are, right? It's not a good thing to be vengeful! Your mum never was. Your dad...sometimes, but it didn't work out well." For a moment, Sirius looked fascinatingly guilty. "So talk about it with me before you ever start on any kind of revenge."

Harry only nodded, eyes downcast, and Dolores knew Sirius had just insured _that_ would never happen.

She waited until Sirius had stopped ranting against the Malfoys and left the room. Then she turned to Harry. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing to be vengeful.”

“But you told me that too much hatred could eat you.”

Dolores leaned back slowly. “I suppose you could look it as the difference between what Dumbledore did and what Lucius Malfoy did.”

Harry only shifted a little in his chair and sneaked a crumb of meat he didn’t think she saw down to Pardus, but he was listening. That was what Dolores would ask for.

“Dumbledore is so desperate to take control of you that he can’t wait for appropriate times to express himself. He came up to us while we were shopping. He came to the house even though he should have been able to see that you were uncomfortable with him and it would serve him well to establish a relationship from a distance first. Do you see?”

Harry nodded, although Dolores had learned sometimes he would do that when he had no real understanding, but wanted to pretend he did. She leaned forwards and tapped him on the nose; he yelped a little. “Harry? I’m asking you if you really understand what I’m saying.”

“Yes,” said Harry, and now he looked happy. That had happened other times after she tapped his nose, but it never did when she squeezed his shoulder. Dolores supposed she had to have some things about him _she_ would never understand. “Dumbledore couldn’t wait, and he was impatient.”

“Yes,” Dolores said, content that his skills in rephrasing concepts were coming along the way they should. “But Lucius waited. Do you know why?”

Harry thought about that for longer than she liked, but one could not have everything. Finally, Harry said hesitantly, “Maybe he didn’t know until now that I was seeing Draco and Sirius was bringing him to the Alley? And stuff.”

“What have I told you about the word _stuff_.”

“Not to use it. Sorry, Miss Dolores.”

That was as polished an apology as she thought she could get out of him. Dolores nodded gracious forgiveness. “ _In the meantime_ , he might not have known about it. But he most likely knew and waited to use the knowledge. He would have to be neglectful not to notice the way his son disappeared so often.”

“The Dursleys wouldn’t notice if I disappeared.”

“They were neglectful.”

Harry nodded, as though it comforted him to hear her say it. “You don’t think Mr. Malfoy is neglectful.”

“No.” Dolores spent a moment looking into his eyes. “And it’s the kind of accusation that, even if you believed it, would be very dangerous for you to make in the future, Harry. Remember that, when you’re trying to save children from abuse.”

“Oh, Draco’s not Muggleborn,” said Harry, and he sounded a little shocked.

Dolores blinked, but opted not to ask about Harry’s feelings on blood status right now. “Anyway. You can see the value in waiting when you have information and only striking once you’re sure? But Sirius would think that kind of behavior is vengeful.”

Again Harry took the time to chew on that information, and Dolores wasn’t surprised; she had given him a lot to think about. She managed to finish most of her breakfast, all but the fresh, cut strawberries piled on her plate, when Harry spoke again. “What did my father do that Sirius was ashamed of?”

Dolores smiled, slowly, this time in praise of Harry’s wisdom, and ignored the way he flushed and squirmed a little. He was _intelligent_. That should be recognized. “You noticed that, too? I don’t know, I’m afraid. I didn’t know much about your father before I adopted you other than the history everyone knows.”

“And do you know more about him now?”

Dolores had to shake her head. “That he was a member of the Potter family, yes, and I got those photographs for you. But I wanted to spend more time on the political context that you’ll need to understand.”

Harry only nodded, more tamely. “I’ll wait a few days and ask Sirius.” He paused, and Dolores waited, because it was the kind of pause that meant something else was coming. “And I don’t care if he would think that’s vengeful.”

Dolores nodded to him with a smile. Sometimes, she honestly couldn’t believe what kind of child she was raising.

_Someone intelligent, who understands the magical world and his place…_

_I wonder if Dumbledore left him with the Muggles in part because he was worried about Harry surpassing him in political influence. Well, I’m not. I’ll never have the same kind of political influence as he does._

_What I want is to be known as the guardian of the Boy-Who-Lived. And not paid more attention than that. You get so much more done that way._


	20. Meeting Lucius

Dolores stepped out of the Leaky Cauldron’s Floo and made sure there was no soot anywhere on her robes. She was wearing dark blue, which flattered her more than the pink she tended to prefer. She had thought of silver or green, but it was just as well, at the moment, not to remind Lucius that she had shared his House.

“Morning, Miss Umbridge.”

Dolores nodded to the barman, Tom. She wouldn’t have been worthy of such a greeting only a short while ago, but everyone knew her now as the guardian of Harry Potter. “Good morning. I am supposed to be meeting Lucius Malfoy here. Has he shown up yet?”

Tom blinked rapidly. “Haven’t seen him, miss.”

Dolores dipped her chin in acknowledgment and took one more look around the Leaky Cauldron. No, she didn’t think Lucius had disguised himself as another patron; his pride would hardly stand for it after she had announced their meeting to all and sundry. She had to assume he was deliberately late.

_Perhaps as a test to see what I will do._

What Dolores did was settle down at a table with her hands folded in front of her and wait five minutes. Then she ordered a butterbeer and sipped it slowly, watching the fireplace and the doors simultaneously. Her seat was well-chosen for that.

Lucius finally appeared half an hour late, stepping slowly out of the fireplace and adjusting his cuff links. His robes were apparently spelled to refract all soot automatically, as none clung to them. They were a deep blue, a few shades lighter than Dolores’s robes, which she found hysterically funny.

He glanced up, saw her, and checked a little in his stride. Dolores didn’t know for sure whether it was the color of her robes or the fact that she sat there calmly sipping a drink instead of raging at him, but she was sure it was one of the two.

“Madam Umbridge.” He bowed to her, making his long white hair sway around him. It was braided behind his neck, gathered with a silver band in the best pure-blood tradition. Dolores didn’t have hair long enough to do that.

It didn’t matter. Where a Malfoy would use tradition as his weapon, Dolores used cunning and patience—the weapons that never went out of style. “Mr. Malfoy.” She stood to drop a curtsey, and sat back down. Lucius took the seat across from her, eyes narrowed and fixed on her face.

Dolores didn’t give anything away. She only sat, smiling blandly, until Lucius turned to order a Firewhisky. Dolores wanted to snort. Was he _really_ trying to take her off-guard by making believe he would get drunk?

If so, it was as childish a tactic as making her wait.

Lucius turned to her and stared in silence until the Firewhisky arrived. Dolores had no problem with that. It was a technique her mother used to use on her. It had never worked after Dolores had learned what it meant that her mother was a Muggle and powerless against her. In this situation, Lucius was powerless to take Harry away from her.

She sipped, and smiled.

When Lucius had taken one drink of Firewhisky—and Dolores was sure he was feigning how much he swallowed—he set the bottle down and said, “You endangered my son.”

“How?”

“By allowing as reckless and irresponsible a man as _Sirius Black_ to take him outside the house.”

“Well,” said Dolores slowly, consideringly. “I’m not the one who permitted that, you know. If you’re angry at anyone, I think it should be your wife. She allowed Draco to come with Sirius under the pretense of getting to know his cousin. I think it’s sad that she would want to _allow_ Draco to know someone so reckless and irresponsible.”

“You condoned it so he could meet up with your ward.”

“Surely you won’t tell me that you think Harry is reckless and irresponsible, Mr. Malfoy. Or that they were meeting _alone_. I was there as a chaperone and guardian at all times. And so was Sirius, whatever Mrs. Malfoy’s fears that he might have taken Draco to—I don’t know, perhaps a Muggle cinema?”

Lucius straightened his cuff links again. Perhaps he meant to draw attention to them and how magnificent they were, but all Dolores could think was that he didn’t know how to answer her. She sipped and smiled.

“You did it under false pretenses.” Lucius turned his head as slowly as a leopard slewing around, catching her eyes and staring directly into them. “You _knew_ my wife didn’t want Draco to have any more contact with Harry, and you provided them with a means to meet up anyway.”

“That is certainly true.”

“ _Why_?”

“Sirius came up with the plan to allow Draco and Harry to meet. I tried to discourage him. It did no good.” Dolores shook her head sadly. “I would rather that it not have been under false pretenses. On the other hand, I do not think a seven-year-old capable of adult discretion, either, and I cannot believe that Mrs. Malfoy was ignorant for long of what the meetings really entailed. Then the question becomes, why did she let Sirius continue to bring Draco?”

“If you are accusing my wife of recklessness—”

“Only of letting her son go out with a man that you yourself describe as reckless. Say that she didn’t know he was meeting up with Harry, or me.” Dolores put her hand beneath her chin and stared into Lucius’s eyes. “That makes her look even worse, doesn’t it? If she thought her son was alone with someone who spent six years in Azkaban?”

Lucius’s fingers were tight on the stem of his glass. “You will _not_ accuse my wife, madam.”

“And you will not accuse my ward. I am willing to trade one condition for the other.”

Lucius swept his gaze over her. Dolores waited. She thought she knew what he was trying to do: unnerve her so badly that she would trip up and start babbling. He would have to do better than this.

“You are such a little thing,” Lucius whispered. “How could you step into the path of my ambitions like this?”

“I was unaware that I had. We cooperated in getting rid of some of Dumbledore’s influence in the Wizengamot, and I have custody of Harry. What did I interfere in?”

“ _I_ should have had custody of Harry Potter.”

That was blunt enough that Dolores did stare. Then she confined herself to a single twitch of her shoulders under her robe. “You never applied for it. You could have done that if you wanted it, when I was before the Wizengamot. They would have given it to you.” Lucius had more power and connections than she did. Of _course_ they would have.

“I faced those—unfortunate accusations in the war. I thought we would cooperate for a time and you would pass the custody to me when the scrutiny was less intense.”

“The scrutiny will never be less intense as long as Dumbledore believes he needs Harry to win the war,” said Dolores automatically, but her mind was busy. “How could I—do that when I didn’t know you wanted it?”

Lucius looked straight at her, his eyes pale and gleaming like the stones in the collar of his robe. “How could you _think_ to keep the Boy-Who-Lived for yourself when you are of such low status, and no better than half a Mudblood besides?”

Dolores didn’t react because of her surprise at first, which clamped around her mouth and arms like steel. Then she nodded slowly. “I see. I did not realize that you thought of me that way.”

“Did you think I thought of you as an _equal_?”

“As an ally.” Dolores took another pull on her butterbeer. “Most allies can control their tongues around one another, and their contempt, if they actually feel it.” She didn’t think Lucius had picked up on her contempt for him, or would have been able to believe in it if he had.

“You were useful. I was content to have the boy grow up in your household for a few months as his first exposure to the magical world. And then you seemed set on keeping him, and you deceived me. I was waiting for you to realize the truth. You never did.”

“Well. I have now.”

“You have now,” Lucius echoed softly. “After _convincing_ half the wizarding world that you are the only right and proper guardian to the boy, making it extraordinarily difficult for me to get further in my petition to claim him. You will pay for that.” He stood. “And for the deception that you perpetrated on my son and my wife,” he added, as if he had just now forgotten the supposed cause of his outrage.

Dolores thought about telling him that Draco would be devastated to be separated from Harry, but then didn’t say anything. If he believed it, it would be worse for her.

“Nothing to say?” Lucius asked after a moment, when he had stood there staring at her and Dolores had remained quiet.

“Nothing that would make you see the sense of allying with me.” Dolores stood and shrugged, then finished the butterbeer. “Perhaps this meeting was useless to both of us.” She turned away.

In truth, of course, she had discovered something useful no matter how Lucius might see it. He was still, and always, invested in blood status, more than in creating political contacts that would be useful for himself at some point in the future.

_Let us hope that Draco is not so entrenched and might be redeemed._

She thought Lucius might call after her, but he did not, only pivoting on his heels like a machine to look as she made her way to the Leaky Cauldron’s Floo and called out the address of home.

*

“Does that mean I won’t see Draco again?”

The four of them—Dolores, Sirius, Harry, and Lupin, since Dolores thought the Malfoys might try to get at him should they realize he was Harry’s tutor—were sitting in the drawing room that Dolores sometimes used for Harry’s etiquette lessons. Harry had his head bowed and was picking at a trailing string on the sleeve of his robe.

Dolores cast the spell that would sever the string and sew up the edge of the robe, a little annoyed. The house-elves should have attended to that. Harry jumped and focused on her.

“Of course not, pup,” Sirius said at once. “I’ll just go and kidnap him sometimes, and that means we can all play together!”

Dolores rolled her eyes. “You will do no such thing, Black.”

“But if they want to see each other and we give Draco back once in a while, what’s the matter with it?”

Dolores didn’t bother to respond. Sometimes there was no reasoning with a man who had spent seven years in Azkaban. Lupin, at least, had his hand over his face, which might mean he shared her despair.

“I think you will see him again, but I don’t know when,” Dolores told Harry. “It means making the Malfoys realize they made a mistake to stop him coming to see you, and that they will never have custody of you.”

“Why won’t they have custody of me?”

“Because I won’t let them.”

Harry widened his eyes and blinked them rapidly. Dolores wasn’t sure what he was feeling. Maybe he _wanted_ to be adopted by someone who had more money than they would ever have, and grand bedrooms, and more toys than Dolores could afford right now.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” said Dolores automatically, although she was still studying Harry and trying to figure out why he thought protecting her rights was something to thank her over. Perhaps he understood that his future was best with her. In which case, she had to give him more credit for insight than Lucius Malfoy.

_Then again, I knew that already._

“I don’t know why Malfoy thought you would hand custody over to him without a murmur,” Lupin said then, softly. “Or at all. Why he waited this long. He thinks he can defeat you in a full argument before the Wizengamot.”

“He probably can,” Dolores acknowledged grimly. She would have Minister Bagnold’s support, but even Bagnold tended to back down from challenging the pure-blood supremacists with a lot of money and connections. Lucius was probably the archetypal rich, connected pure-blood.

“You _said_ they wouldn’t have custody of me.”

Dolores nodded to Harry. “And I meant it.”

“But how can you keep custody of me if they make you back down in front of the Wizengamot?”

Sirius was the one who looked up, with a strange light shining in his eyes that Dolores thought had probably been more frequent before he went to prison. “You change the ground.” He smiled at Lupin. “You remember, Moony? All those times that Slytherins tried to ambush us in the dungeons, and we led them upstairs and then played pranks on them on ground that _we_ knew.”

Dolores managed a slight, pained smile. She could take Sirius’s point, although honestly, she thought it could have been made without reference to his irrational prejudice against Slytherins. “We can do that. But it will take work to keep it from coming out in the Wizengamot.”

“We don’t want to go there,” said Harry, his fingers splayed out along his forehead, across the scar.

“How, though?” Sirius had swung right back into the depths of gloom, and he parodied Harry’s position without, Dolores was sure, delving into the deep thought that lay behind it. “All Malfoy has to do is announce he wants the Wizengamot to look into it, and we’ll _have_ to go. They can legally require us to go.”

“Um,” said Harry. Dolores nodded to him, letting him know that what Sirius had said was true. But Harry went on. “What if they didn’t want me?”

“I’m afraid that’s not true, Harry. No matter what, they want to become your guardians for the political power they can wield by gaining control of you.”

Sirius hissed at her, sounding scandalized, but Dolores had never hidden that from Harry and she would not now. If she had, then he would have wanted to know at some point what all his political lessons were for, anyway. He was far smarter than either the Muggles or Dumbledore had given him credit for.

“No, I mean.” Harry was sitting up straight, and there was a light dawning in his eyes. “If they thought I was a horrible child? If they thought you had to do a lot more than you do?” He hesitated, then pushed on. “If they thought I was _really_ like the burden and the spoiled freak the Dursleys always thought I was?”

“You’re not like that, pup!”

Luckily, Lupin leaned over and smacked Sirius’s arm so that Dolores didn’t have to take precious time out of her own day to do it. “That’s not what he’s saying,” Lupin hissed from the corner of his mouth. “Listen to what he _is_ saying.”

Sirius rubbed his arm and frowned, but listened as Harry sat up and widened his eyes and let his lip tremble.

“I’m so damaged from my Muggle relatives that I still have nightmares sometimes,” Harry whispered. His voice slid into a whimper. “Well, not _sometimes._ Every night. And I worry about my dead parents and what they would think all the time. And I don’t know much about magic or history yet. And I don’t know what to think of Light and Dark. And I ask all these questions, _all_ the time, and I don’t obey, and I like to sneak out and fly on my broom, and—”

The rest of the words were drowned in Sirius’s laughter as he leaned over and clapped Harry on the shoulder. “That’s _brilliant,_ pup!” he exclaimed. “You don’t have to worry about any Malfoy adopting you with that.”

“Yes, you do not,” Dolores said, keeping her eyes from narrowing. “You are brilliant, Harry, and a large part of the reason that you are going to remain free and in my custody.”

Harry beamed at her, then got drawn into a conversation with Sirius and Lupin about how long he could keep up the act before Lucius Malfoy would be running in horror. No one seemed to notice Dolores as she leaned back in her chair and studied Harry pensively.

_Brilliant, yes. And I wonder where he leaned some of that. I did not teach him all of that._

She would have to be careful. Harry was either learning more from Lupin and Sirius than she’d realized, or brilliant enough to come up with such ideas himself.

Neither thought pleased her.


	21. The Brat of a Child

“You are to tell me the minute you’re uncomfortable, Harry.” Dolores arranged the collar of his robes, stepped back, and considered the effect in the mirror. It was all right, but not perfectly desirable. She smoothed her fingers over it again. “You are to tell me if you think Lucius might be trying to enchant you.”

“Or you or Sirius, right?” Harry met her eyes in the mirror, and Dolores found it splendidly difficult to look away.

Dolores nodded. Lupin would be staying behind, not least because he didn’t have even Malfoy’s shadow of a claim to legal guardianship of Harry. “We can’t afford to let him gain an advantage because we weren’t paying attention.”

“I’ll tell you, don’t worry.” Harry’s hand found her hand and squeezed, and Dolores realized that she had been waiting for that reassurance. She frowned at herself. Was she the adult or the child? “Now, shouldn’t we go, Miss Dolores? We don’t want to be late for the Wizengamot, and it’s almost time.”

It was indeed, Dolores confirmed with a fast glance at the clock. She ushered Harry out of the dressing room with a hand on his back, and was immediately greeted with Sirius’s whine. “Why do I have to wear these clothes? Why does Harry? We’re trying to convince them that he’s a brat, right? Well, they’re going to take one look at those dress robes and think that he’s perfectly _fine_.”

Dolores ignored the way Sirius yanked on the collar of _his_ dress robes. A ruffle in Sirius’s appearance wouldn’t discredit her as much “Harry has his own plans for that,” she said. She let her hand rest on Harry’s head, not heavily enough to disorder his hair. “Ready?”

“No.”

Ignoring Sirius, Dolores waited until Harry held her eyes and nodded with grave confidence. Then she aimed him at the door, and walked him to it, ignoring the way Lupin called good wishes from upstairs and Sirius immediately complained to him. Her mind was ranging over the hour ahead, in which Harry would need to take the leading role for the first time since she’d gained custody of him.

He had to do it, of course. His plan was good, and relied on Malfoy believing that he was the greatest brat and liability to walk the face of the earth. Dolores had presented herself as a civilizing and restraining influence. Too many would sit back and relax if she pressed forwards.

But it was hard. She knew Harry was brilliant. She had to count on that genius manifesting exactly when and where it counted, though. And children weren’t known for their sense of appropriateness.

“I’m here, Miss Dolores.”

Dolores started and looked down. Harry gave her a little smile as he bowed her to the Apparition point, exactly the way Lucius would bow to his wife, she thought.

“I’m here. And I’ll do things right. And you’re okay. And I’m not going anywhere.”

Dolores only nodded, because no other response would be appropriate right now, and because she was struggling to deal with the realization flooding her.

The realization that she might be raising someone who could surpass her in strength.

*

The Wizengamot courtroom was more crowded than last time. Dolores wasn’t sure if that was because Lucius had provided more advance notice for this trial than the one that confronted Dolores with Dumbledore or if more people were there to testify for the Malfoys’ suitability as guardians.

There was nothing to be gained in staring around like a frightened rabbit, though, and a great deal to be lost, so Dolores simply fixed her gaze on the far door and moved across the room as if it was Harry’s school study. She ended up settled, comfortably enough, at the edge of the small circle they were keeping for witnesses’ seats.

“Madam Umbridge.”

That was a wizard Dolores had never seen before, in the heavy formal robes of the Wizengamot, bowing before her. Dolores bowed her head back. It was an appropriate gesture whether he was an ally or an enemy.

“My name is Ernest Bolton,” he said, and held out his hand. Dolores shook it. It was long, thin, and pale, with carefully-trimmed fingernails. That said pure-blood, but Dolores didn’t recognize the last name, which probably put him among the ranks of respected half-bloods with magical mothers. “I wanted to tell you that I admire how you’ve been raising young Mr. Potter.”

Dolores blushed and simpered, the way she knew would work best. “But, Mr. Bolton, we’ve never met, and the questioning hasn’t begun yet. You can’t _possibly_ have enough information to give me a favorable opinion yet!”

“I can see what’s in front of my eyes. And just _look_ at that boy.”

Dolores did, although she wasn’t sure what she would say. It was only Harry standing and talking calmly with Sirius, though. “I’m not sure what you mean, Mr. Bolton.”

“He walks as though he’s confident now, Nothing like the way he was the last time in here, when he cringed, if I’m to be frank. And we need someone to have confidence if they’re really going to grow up to save us all.”

Dolores blinked. She hadn’t thought anyone would see it that way, but she supposed they could, if they both accepted Dumbledore’s word that Harry was a savior and thought of such leadership as political.

“Well, thank you, Mr. Bolton,” she said shyly, keeping her eyes cast down. “I’ve _tried_ with him. But…well…it depends on one’s tolerance for children, you know.”

“He seems like a well-behaved child to _me_.”

She would have to navigate this delicately, if they were to avoid people like Bolton thinking she was a terrible guardian and yet assist Harry’s deception. “I’ve been telling him the truth in bits,” she said, and bit her lip a little. “I’m afraid that what I’ve told him _has_ increased his confidence, but had a few side-effects, too.”

Bolton obviously opened his mouth to ask about side-effects, but Minister Bagnold made noise with the aid of her wand to her throat. Bolton nodded to her and strode away to his seat. Dolores made a mental promise to herself to find out how important he was.

“If we could sit, please.” Minister Bagnold was looking around with slightly squinting eyes, her expression pleasant but firm. Dolores folded her robes close around her knees as the other Wizengamot members took their chairs, giving her doubtful looks and shakes of their head as they went.

Well, not _all_ were hostile. And if some of them had the same perceptions as Bolton, then they’d succeed at least with them.

Harry sank into his seat, his arms folded and a scowl darkening his face. Dolores didn’t smile, because she had seen him practice it at home. But she saw a few of the Wizengamot members exchange either questioning or wondering glances.

Sirius, of course, was still standing with his hands locked on the back of his chair, and a scowl planted on his face. “I want to ask something, Minister. If we’re meeting to see whether Malfoy should get custody, why don’t you ask _me_?”

“Because you are not Harry’s legal guardian,” said Bagnold, with a faint inclination of her head that Sirius might interpret as a bow if he was stupid. Dolores found herself debating whether he was that stupid, and was annoyed to realize that she really didn’t know. “That is simple enough. Now—”

“But you should still _ask_ me if I approve of the Malfoys taking Harry.”

Dolores could see the moment when Bagnold reached the decision that it was simpler to indulge Sirius than hold up the discussion for much longer. With a faint sigh, she said, “All right, Mr. Black, how do you feel about it?”

“I _hate_ it.” Sirius turned his head and stared at Lucius, who only looked down on him with a faint, serene expression of amusement. “The only thing I can see in their favor is that they have a son Harry’s age. Otherwise, they’re horrible candidates. Lucius is an accused former Death Eater!”

“Until recently, Mr. Black, so were you.”

Sirius ignored that better than Dolores would have thought him able to, although his eyes flashed in response. “And Lucius and my cousin Narcissa are, well, _quiet_ people. They don’t have the experience to handle a child like Harry.”

“What do you mean by that?” Minister Bagnold’s eyebrows were almost at her hairline.

Sirius waved a hand at Harry in what looked like mock despair, at least to Dolores, and sat back down. But she could see the satisfied glint in his eyes, and had to nod despite herself. This made an excellent lead-in to the tactic Harry had planned.

Harry stood up, his arms folded, and his lips jutting out. “I _can_ be quiet. But I don’t like Mr. Malfoy. I don’t like Mrs. Malfoy. I don’t want to be placed there.”

“I’m afraid that sometimes, what children want doesn’t come into the matter,” said Lucius, in a voice that was as soft as winter and which he probably thought would work. “We are trying to decide on the _best_ guardian for you, not the one you like best, Mr. Potter.”

“But the one I _want_ is Miss Dolores!”

Harry let his voice soar into a shrill note Dolores had never heard from him, and had had no idea he was capable of. She managed to keep sitting still and keep her hands folded in her lap by sheer force of will, as if he did this every day.

Harry tilted his head and made himself flush red, and suddenly Dolores knew who he was imitating: the awful Muggle cousin he had told her about more than once.

“Want Miss Dolores, want Miss Dolores, want Miss Dolores—”

“You must see that whining will not get you what you want, Mr. Potter,” said Lucius, wincing a bit. “You must go to the guardian who will protect you and train you and give you the most attention. She has not done that, since she permits you to go on like this.” He cast Dolores a narrow glance.

Dolores didn’t stand, didn’t speak, by means of another supreme effort of will. This had always been the weakest point in Harry’s plan, she thought. Lucius could twist words into weapons; it was a survival skill in the Wizengamot. He might easily twist Harry’s into something that would allow him to “adopt” Harry.

“I think there’s something to that,” said Bagnold, even though she sounded apologetic about it. “Not even famous children can get what they want all the time, Mr. Potter. And if Madam Umbridge could get control of your house-elves and property, then she can yield it again. I’m sure Mr. Malfoy would let you visit her sometimes, if you like.”

Harry folded his arms harder and looked as if he might start to send smoke spinning through his ears like the victim of a Pepper-Up Potion. Dolores watched him cautiously. She didn’t know if he could turn this around.

“ _WANT_ MY HOUSE-ELVES! _WANT_ MISS DOLORES! _WANT_ MY OWN BOOKS, AND SIRIUS, AND MY BLANKETS, AND MY TOYS, AND MY PRIVATE ROOM, AND MY _EXTRA_ TOYS—”

Bagnold cast a _Sonorus_ Charm on her throat and tried to shout above the noise, but all that happened was Harry yelling harder and harder. Dolores didn’t shove her hands into her ears. She shook her head sadly when Bolton glanced her way, though, and spread her arms as if to ask what she could do.

Lucius finally slumped back into his seat, looking exhausted and disgusted. Harry stopped yelling at the same moment. From the way he panted a little, Dolores thought he might actually have hurt his throat, and promised herself she would check that as soon as they got home.

And it seemed possible they would be going back to the same house, now.

Before Bagnold or Lucius could speak again, Bolton cast his own _Sonorus_. His voice sounded calm and sensible. “I wonder if we might reconsider, honored members of the Wizengamot? I’ve seen Mr. Malfoy’s son, and he’s very calm and quiet.”

Lucius whirled around. “What’s that got to do with it?”

“Only this. I’m not sure that you have the resources or the patience to cope with a loud and spoiled child, Lucius.” Bolton waved his hand at Harry. “I think it’s more likely that he’ll corrupt your son than the other way around.”

Lucius might have been chewing a spicy pickle. “I can _handle_ him! Better than his current guardian has!”

“And what would you do if he started yelling?” Bolton sounded interested.

“A good dose of the Spanking Charm—”

“But his Muggle relatives abused him.” Bolton turned with his hand splayed out to the rest of their audience. “Do we really want to send Harry Potter back to that?”

There was a sharp wash of interested murmuring from that rest of the audience, and Dolores found herself smiling. _Not a tactic I would have thought to use, but more valuable for that._ It seemed Bolton had decided that he would be their ally even though he didn’t know much about them.

“I would never _abuse_ —”

“Not on purpose,” said Bolton, in a soothing way that made Lucius’s mouth pinch up. Dolores had never been more tempted to laugh, and she was grateful that she had already controlled her emotional reactions today; it made it easier to wrestle with this one. “But I do think that you might replicate the influences of Mr. Potter’s Muggle environment without knowing what you did. Such punishments might work for a child raised in the wizarding world, but not one in Mr. Potter’s unique situation.”

“How can you justify leaving custody with Umbridge?” Lucius spat. “When she has turned him into _this_?”

“Now, I don’t think she did. I think it was probably the Muggles that turned him into this. Right, Madam Umbridge?”

Dolores sighed and nodded. “We’re working on it. You should have seen him the first weeks. Raging in a way that nearly ripped the house down with accidental magic once or twice.” She shuddered. “There was a reason we had to move into the Potter house, you know. Stronger wards and walls.”

“And you do not yet have him under control?”

Dolores met Lucius’s eyes evenly. “I have prioritized other things than control, Mr. Malfoy. Getting Harry up to speed on wizarding politics and the people who might want to hurt him, for example.”

Lucius’s eyes were slits a snake might envy, but he said nothing for the moment. It was Bagnold who spoke up, sounding relieved. “Is it true that you might be able to convince Mr. Potter to abandon his temper tantrums like this, Madam Umbridge?”

“I thought I had,” said Dolores in a mournful tone. “He hadn’t had any outbursts like this for a week. And then, when he realized that he might be taken away from a home he’s grown to like…” She held out her hands.

“ _DON’T WANNA_!” Harry added, helpfully.

Lucius flinched again. Dolores could see him make the connection in his mind, between the vulgarity of Harry’s behavior and having to deal with it if he actually managed to secure custody.

And he would never agree not to use Spanking Charms, or live in the Potter home, or whatever other measures the Wizengamot thought might ease such a transition. That left him rather stuck.

“Of course, if we leave him in Madam Umbridge’s care, I’m sure that she will try to make him calmer and more worthy of the important position he holds in the wizarding world,” said Bolton persuasively.

“She will have to.” Lucius, spiteful. “At the moment, he’s not fit to lead a herd of cattle.”

Sirius lifted his head and stared straight at Lucius. Dolores saw the way his eyes gleamed with the desire for revenge, and sighed. Now she would have to watch him sharply, along with so many other things at once.

“Well, we can disagree about what he is and what he’ll become,” said Bagnold, in her best soothing voice. “For the moment, Madam Umbridge, do you think Harry will calm down if you tell him that he’ll be going back home?”

Dolores nodded and moved over to kneel in front of Harry. He still had his arms folded and seemed to be forcing his face to turn redder and redder. Dolores was relieved that he had been clever enough to keep the act up even after they seemed to be safe.

“Harry. What if you can come with me? Will that make you happy?”

“My _toys_ ,” Harry said, in a high-pitched whining tone that put Dolores’s teeth right on edge. “And my _kitten_. Will I have _my kitten_?”

Dolores raised her eyebrows in a little arch that would tell Harry, or should, that she was nearing the end of her patience, but nodded. “Of course. Pardus can come with us no matter where you go.”

“ _Pardus_?” she thought she heard Lucius say derisively, but luckily, Harry had decided that he could calm down without losing face. He beamed at her and threw his arms around her waist before she could brace herself for it.

“You’re the best guardian in the _world_ , Miss Dolores!”

As Dolores stroked his hair and watched the sour expressions on the face of Lucius and his allies, she decided that it seemed, oddly, as if Harry believed it, and wasn’t just saying it for the sake of the crowd.


	22. Iron and Silk

Given everything, Dolores wasn’t as surprised as perhaps she should have been to receive a threatening letter from Lucius Malfoy. She checked it thoroughly for curses and contact poisons before she opened it.

Between her name and his flourish of a signature was a single sentence.

_This isn’t over._

“Miss Dolores, who’s it from?”

Dolores smiled at Harry as she laid the parchment side. “Someone who has better things to do than write to me,” she responded, entirely truthfully. “Now, I want you to tell me what you would do if you suddenly found yourself in a Muggle area without protection.”

Harry frowned a little. “How would that happen? I mean, you and Sirius don’t let me out of your sight, and if you were sick I would have Remus to take me somewhere and get help, and—”

“It’s a hypothetical scenario, Harry. Answer the question.”

“How can it help to train me if I don’t know how I got there in the first place? Did I use accidental magic to Apparate?”

Dolores held back her sigh and slowly nodded. “Say it was that. I know that you used that kind of magic once when you were younger. Imagine what you could do with it now that you’re older and understand it was magic, not—something unknown.” She disliked speaking the word “freakishness” aloud. Harry did not need the prejudices the Muggles had drilled into his head reinforced.

“Can it be accidental when I know about it?” Harry asked, but he subsided when he saw how she looked at him. He closed his eyes. “All right. Where is the Muggle area, Miss Dolores? Is it London, or somewhere else?”

“Make it London.” In some ways, getting out of a populated Muggle area was harder for a wizard than an isolated rural one; there were more people around to see any mistakes that he might make.

“All right. Then I’ll try to find directions to the road where the Leaky Cauldron is, and go there.”

“Why?” Dolores asked in interest. That wasn’t anything like what Harry had said when they played this game before. On the other hand, she didn’t have a habit of asking him to find his way around London.

“I know they have Floo powder there. I would Floo home as soon as I convinced Tom that it was okay for me to wander around alone and that I was all right.”

Dolores blinked. She had not anticipated such a simple way of bypassing her game. And she was impressed that Harry had remembered the bartender Tom’s name after exactly two exposures.

“Very well. We shall make the next game more challenging. You are lost in the middle of a small forest near Muggle homes. Rural ones. You have no idea where London is. What would you do?”

“Go to the Muggle houses and beg for a ride to London.”

Dolores paused. “Why would you do that?”

Harry opened his eyes. “I don’t like _my_ relatives that much, Miss Dolores. They aren’t—kind to children.” It sounded like there was a sticky clog in his throat. Then again, Harry didn’t like talking about his relatives much, as Dolores well knew. “But that doesn’t mean other Muggle would hurt me. I could find someone who would feel sorry for me and get me in touch with people in London. It would probably be a woman. Muggle women were always kinder to me when they didn’t know the stories Aunt Petunia told about me.”

 _Kinder than men. I wonder if that is one reason he trusts me, and took some time to warm up to Sirius?_ “Very well. And if you could find no one in the immediate vicinity who would help you?”

“I would walk until I found someone who could.”

Dolores studied him, waiting to see if this was a joke or a test in return for her test. But it did not seem so. Harry’s eyes were clear, his voice firm, and there was no glint of amusement anywhere in his face.

_Indomitable._

That might or might not be a good thing for her, in the long run, but at the moment Dolores had to admit it was _just_ the thing to help them win Harry’s place in the world. She relaxed and smiled at him. “Dumbledore is never going to know what hit him,” she said.

“Or Malfoy, either.”

Dolores blinked. There was a tone in Harry’s voice that made her wonder if he’d been talking to Sirius about Sirius’s plans for revenge. “You can’t forgive him even though he’s Draco’s father?”

“He would have taken me away and tried to control me. I won’t forgive him.” Harry spent a moment staring at the wall, and then shook his head and stood up. “Thank you, Miss Dolores. I’m going to find Sirius.”

_That probably does mean that he’s talking about revenge with him. I only hope that neither of them causes us too many problems._

*

“A please to meet you again, Madam Umbridge.”

“Do call me Dolores. Such good allies shouldn’t stand on formality. I presume I can also call you Ernest?”

“Of course,” said Bolton, and kissed the air over the back of her hand. He looked around the sitting room in interest as Dolores ushered him to a chair. “You’ve decorated the old home in a splendid way. I’d have thought all the Potter properties and the goods in them would have crumbled to dust with no sustaining magic.”

“There were still some house-elves watching over them, and of course the elves are overjoyed at being able to be here and help take care of Harry as he comes of age,” Dolores said, taking the chair across from him. She turned her head. “And here’s the boy of the hour now.”

Harry knew perfectly well what to do, given that she’d told him about the owl she’d got from Bolton and the payment he would probably demand. Certainly a few moments of Harry’s time would be part of that payment. Harry walked into the room with the tea-tray and put it down carefully on the covered table between Dolores and Bolton, then bowed. “What kind of tea do you take, sir?”

“I’m impressed. Not many people keep the old pure-blood courtesies anymore.” Bolton glanced at her, and Dolores could see the glitter in his eyes. He would be wondering why Dolores had bothered, since neither she nor Harry were pure-bloods.

“Oh, it helps that Harry’s godfather is a Black, of course,” Dolores said, with a little turn of her wrist. “He could tell us all about the niceties.”

Perfect truth. Sirius _could_ have, and that he would rather be ripped apart by wild hippogriffs than actually do it didn’t need to be mentioned. From the small smile Bolton gave her, he might have noticed. He turned to Harry. “Two sugars and a good deal of milk.”

Harry made the tea perfectly and gave it to Bolton, then glanced sideways at Dolores. “You know the way I like it,” she said softly. She knew he was wondering if she was going to speak her usual order aloud in front of Bolton, but she didn’t intend to. It was not that they were such a great secret, but she wanted the tea service to show, in part, how intimate she and Harry were.

Harry nodded, and immediately set about making her tea. Bolton gave her a somewhat sardonic look. “It appears that young Mr. Potter has recovered from his time with the Muggles rather well.”

“He always does,” Dolores said, and touched Harry’s shoulder in thanks as he held her cup out to her. “As long as someone is raising him who understands him.”

“Is that all Mr. Malfoy would have had to do to win you, Mr. Potter? Just show you a little understanding?”

“No, sir. More than that. Because he got in my way.”

There was a trace of that glint in his eyes again. Bolton’s brows crept up, but he didn’t seem to be inclined to snap. He only waited while Harry gave them both another polite little bow and left.

Then he turned to Dolores again. “Have you considered what kind of potential political mastermind you’re training up?”

“I think neither Harry nor I would call him a mastermind quite yet,” Dolores said pleasantly. “But he has trained _very_ hard, and he understands the kind of position he could hold one day, not only because of his wealth or because his father was a Potter, but because of his fame. It’s a lot to grasp for a seven-year-old. He’s done remarkably well.”

“Indeed, he has.” Bolton paused. “And I imagine you would appreciate knowing why I helped you in the trial in front of the Wizengamot.”

“Yes. I could come up with a number of different motivations, but I wanted to hear you explain them yourself.”

“As wise as you are political,” Bolton murmured, and put down his cup. “I don’t suppose you know a lot about how Malfoy came by his influence in the Wizengamot.”

“I assumed it was his wealth and his connections in the Ministry.” It was the usual way. In fact, now that Dolores thought about it, she couldn’t think of any other way, except by being absurdly prominent in another field the way Dumbledore had been, or the sort of pure-blood whose family had always been on the Wizengamot and the other members going along with the pressure to do it “as it’s always been done.”

“Part of it was that.” Bolton’s lips were tight. “What I tell you cannot go beyond this room. You cannot tell Mr. Black.”

“What about Harry?” Dolores asked, even as she cast the sort of charm that would disable any eavesdropping spells Sirius had left lying about. He had a bad habit of doing that, and of pouting when she found them.

Bolton paused. “If you think he would be mature enough to trust with the knowledge…”

“Hard to answer when I don’t know what you’re going to tell me yet, Ernest.”

Bolton took the bait. “Lucius challenged and dueled a friend of mine, Shirley Linden. There was bad blood, a feud between their families; I don’t know what it was about. But he set up a challenge that seemed to play to her strengths, and when she fell into the trap, then he demanded that she cease all political activity immediately. That meant leaving the Wizengamot.”

“And you think…”

“I think he’s done it many times. Not always with duels, and not always to friends of mine. Sometimes with blackmail, at least once with what I’m sure was a direct threat, and once with—well, if I could have proven it was the Imperius Curse, he wouldn’t still be there.” Bolton took an angry sip of his tea. “He might have merited an influential position there _anyway_ , but he secured it by maneuvering people who opposed him out of the way. That means he’s more powerful than just his presence in the room would suggest.”

Dolores nodded. “You want to limit his influence?”

“And get revenge of a sort, and ensure that he doesn’t accrue any more. Yes. I think that you’re one of the very few methods of doing it. Mr. Potter is a new enough player on the board that Lucius doesn’t have a strategy for countering him yet. Well, of course Dumbledore could hold him in check, but everyone _knew_ about the bad blood between him and Lucius. That made his opposition worth less than it would have been otherwise. You understand?”

“Yes, I do. But you know that Harry is far too young for any serious political influence in the Wizengamot itself.”

“Not too young to have serious allies. I think you’re one, and the Minister is another, although she had her hands tied last week.” Bolton’s hand tightened on his teacup. “There’s a power gap with Dumbledore fading out now. We have to fill it before Lucius does. Would you be willing to help me?”

“We owe you for your help the other day. I would be willing to do it. But you must understand that Harry is still a child, and I cannot always tell him what to think.”

“What cause is dearest to him? I mean, besides learning about the wizarding world and staying with you.”

“He is worried about Muggleborn children being abused by their Muggle guardians.”

“For reasons I can understand. So. Does he want to work through legislation?”

Dolores had to laugh. “I doubt Harry has thought that far ahead, honestly. What _I_ know is that he wants to stop Muggleborn children from being abused any way he can. If that means going around knocking on doors and asking blunt questions, I think he would do it.”

Bolton was quiet for a time. Then he said, “What are you going to do when he goes to Hogwarts?”

“Encourage him to communicate with me the instant Dumbledore does something designed to place him in danger or control him.”

“And you think that would be _enough_?”

“I thought about tutoring him at home through his Hogwarts years, the way I am now, but then everyone would say that showed I was afraid of Dumbledore and his possible influence on Harry, or afraid to let Harry out of my own control. What I hope is to make him independent enough that he won’t have to fear Dumbledore. He’ll be able to see through him.”

Bolton nodded slowly. “Will Dumbledore leave you alone for long enough?”

“At the moment, he has been stymied,” said Dolores, with a slight shrug. “He tried to get custody of Harry through legal means. He tried to manipulate Harry into choosing him. He tried to make Sirius his legal guardian and get Sirius under his thumb, too. I don’t see why he would try another tactic right away.”

“Perhaps not _right_ away. I would still be on my guard, if I were you.”

Dolores beamed at him. “I am.”

The details after that were more technical, discussions of how to curb Lucius’s power without moving so openly against him that other Wizengamot members might begin to think Harry had been acting. Dolores was well-satisfied when Bolton left the house, though. Here was an ally where she understood _exactly_ what he wanted, and it wasn’t custody of Harry, and moreover, he was someone who had been in the Wizengamot for a long time. This could be a strong partnership.

She went to find Harry and tell him so, but he wasn’t in the schoolroom with Lupin where he would usually be having his lessons this time of day. Wondering, Dolores went up to the second floor, and found Harry standing with wide eyes next to a half-open door. When he saw Dolores, he shook his head urgently and laid a finger alongside his lips.

Dolores edged closer and listened.

“…and you’d better listen _close_ , Malfoy. One more stunt like the one you tried to get Harry out of my custody, and you’ll end up homeless.”

“Do you really expect me to believe that threat, Black?”

Dolores wanted to close her eyes and bang her head against the wall. No, of course Lucius didn’t, and of course Sirius had overstepped in his desire for revenge. Honestly, could he go five minutes without trying to turn a stupid plan into reality?

“Yes, I do. Because I spent the last week reactivating the Black investments and buying up new properties and looking at family ledgers, and _what do you know_ , one of your ancestors gave Malfoy Manor outright to my ancestor Arcturus Black in payment of a debt. Of course, Arcturus died of what _certainly_ wasn’t poison a week later and he hadn’t made a will to bequeath the house anywhere, so it went back to the Malfoy family. But I found that sort of suspicious, you know. One of _my_ paranoid ancestors, not making a will right away and taking precautions to ensure his new property went to the family? So I started doing some digging.”

Lucius was absolutely silent. Dolores, too, didn’t think she could have spoken if she’d tried.

“And what do you _know_ ,” Sirius crooned, sounding like a crocodile, “it turned out he _had_ bequeathed the house somewhere. Just not to his daughter, who apparently hid the will because she was _infatuated_ with Henri Malfoy. Not destroyed it, of course. Black documents are usually charmed indestructible. And the house was left to Arcturus’s son ‘and the heirs of that son in perpetuity,’ and _I’m_ the heir to his son because my mother was, and _I_ could come and prove lots of nasty things against you in open court if I ever wanted to, which I don’t necessarily want to, because Harry’s where he belongs right now and I don’t want to distress Cousin Narcissa, but I could do it if I wanted to, _which you’d better give me a reason not to want to._ Do you _understand_ , Lucius?”

Silence hard enough to freeze an Abraxan, and Lucius’s choked voice said, “I understand.”

“Good!” said Sirius in his usual cheerful tone. “That will be all, then. Have a good day.”

He shut the Floo. Dolores was still feeling wrongfooted when Harry turned and beamed up at her.

“He’s _wonderful_ ,” Harry said sincerely.

Dolores nodded. _And much more dangerous than I thought._


	23. Dangerous, Too

As of yet, Dolores hadn’t come up with anything to do about Sirius.

He was so bright-eyed and laughing most of the time that she had almost begun to believe that she wouldn’t _have_ to do anything. He ruffled Harry’s hair and waved Dolores off when she tried to tell him about their alliance with Ernest Bolton.

“You’re the one that matters to,” Sirius had said, lying out on his back in the grass with Harry beside him. Bright sun beamed down over them. Sirius had closed his eyes and seemed content to pretend he was Pardus, who lay, much more legitimately sun-bathing, next to Harry. “You’re the one who should set the terms of the alliance and deal with them. Leave me to relax.”

Dolores might have been reassured by that, except that she always remembered the look in his eyes when he had threatened Lucius Malfoy. His words had rambled the way they did half the time, but that look had been different.

As it was, however, Sirius didn’t do anything else that would distinguish him as political or dangerous while Dolores watched him. At last, Dolores acknowledged reluctantly that she would be better off putting the problem out of her mind and paying attention to other things instead.

*

Bolton was the one who brought her the news that Dumbledore was recovering his support in the Wizengamot.

“Not everyone,” he reassured her when Dolores opened her mouth to protest. They were sitting outside in the same part of the garden where Sirius brought Harry most of the time, but knowing Bolton was supposed to visit, Sirius had spirited Harry to Diagon Alley for the day. “And there’s no guarantee that he’ll be Head of the Wizengamot again any time soon. But there are people who are saying it’s understandable that he wanted custody of Mr. Potter.”

“They won’t give it back to him?”

“Not that I can tell. They’re saying it’s an understandable motive, not something everyone should forgive him for.”

Dolores nodded and studied her cup for a moment. “So we should be prepared for him to do something soon.”

“I don’t know about that.” Bolton took another sip of her wine, and sighed as a slight breeze ruffled his hair. “Dumbledore can play a long game. It’s the way he got power in the first place. Lots of people were watching after he defeated Grindelwald, you know, waiting for him to claim a place in the Wizengamot or demand some kind of reward. But he never did—he got the Order of Merlin First Class, of course, without demanding it—and then he went back to Hogwarts and started teaching again. When people asked him, he said the opportunity to influence future generations was enough.”

“Of course he did.” Dolores managed to refrain from rolling her eyes, but it was hard. “Did anyone ever stop to think just _how_ he was influencing them?”

“People asked the question. Other people reassured them that of course Dumbledore’s influence was benign.”

“I suppose there’s no way of ousting him from Hogwarts before Harry attends.”

“Not that I know of.” Bolton leaned forwards. “But you could borrow elements of his game.”

“How?” Dolores knew she didn’t have half of Dumbledore’s charisma or his reputation, and as far as she could tell, that was what he built on. Well, that and native shrewdness. He had certainly never claimed immense wealth or pure blood.

“You could pretend that you don’t want excessive rewards for raising Harry in knowledge and acceptance of his birthright. You could say that whenever someone pays enough attention to you. But you go on saying it, and you go on raising Harry, and you go on granting interviews when enough people ask, and—”

“I have people respecting me because of my meekness and humility,” Dolores finished. It wasn’t a bad strategy, and it would work well with the one she had planned on already, being the power behind Harry’s throne.

Bolton nodded.

Dolores met his gaze directly. “I still have to know. Is Lucius Malfoy’s fall from grace enough of a reward for you from this? You’re spying on the Wizengamot for me and giving me free political advice.”

“What are a few conversations between friends?”

“Ernest.”

“All right,” Bolton said finally, after he had drained the cup. “The truth is that I think you’ll go far. I mean, for all I know someone would arise tomorrow and manage to attach themselves to Mr. Potter, but I don’t think it’s likely. And you do have a few things that pure-bloods will think are disadvantages.”

Dolores raised her eyebrows. “You think I can overcome those as far as they’re concerned?”

“Of course you can.” Bolton eyed her for a moment, then put his cup down on the table next to them, made of wood and inlaid with a curling silver leaf tendril. “Do you feel that inferior because you’re not pure of blood?”

Dolores felt her face burn. Still, a second later she said, “There are those who will always count it against me.”

“They’re fools. Tell me about your family.”

Dolores stared at him warily.

“I’m your ally, Dolores. If you can’t trust me, then you might as well dismiss me. And that means I’ll have to give up my vengeance and my hopes of being on your political team, and you’ll have to give up knowing about the Wizengamot and blocking Dumbledore as he gets ready to try to take custody of Mr. Potter away again.” Bolton actually tapped sharply on the table, making Dolores jump at the sound, almost as much as if he’d tapped on her knee. “There’s no reason for either of us to lose those advantages over something as silly as this, is there? Minister Bagnold will stand on your side regardless of your blood. And you needn’t fear that I’ll spread it around.”

 _At least, if he does, I’ll know exactly where the betrayal came from._ Sirius could learn the same things, but he wouldn’t care to use them as a weapon.

 _Or maybe he would._ Dolores hadn’t forgotten about the look in Sirius’s eyes when he threatened Lucius yet.

“My mother was a Muggle,” she finally said. “My father was—pure-blood, but a job so low-ranking that it couldn’t get him any higher. And that’s the truth.” She didn’t feel the need to tell him she had a sibling who was a Squib, not yet. That kind of thing was shameful even among the pure-bloods who didn’t care about Muggle heritage. She stared at Bolton hard. “Now what are you going to say?”

“I’m going to _advise_ you, not just say something. And that’s to let this be known.”

Dolores laughed derisively.

“If it remains secret, or simply ignored, then someday one of our enemies will find out and use it against you.” Bolton was learning forwards, almost speaking in a whisper. “There are some who couldn’t, like Dumbledore, because his views on Muggles are too well-known and people would simply laugh at him trying to make others dislike you because of that. But there are some who could make it a weapon.”

“If I let it be known, then I’ll be despised.”

“Only by a few. You can make it into armor, into a weapon of its own.”

Dolores studied him skeptically. “And why?”

“Because you can use it to make you seem like a better guardian for Mr. Potter. You’re both half-bloods, and you both have a connection to the Muggle world. You both know what it’s like to be despised by the pure-bloods who consider themselves above you.”

“Even those pure-bloods will bow to Harry, you said.”

“Because of his fame. But what happens if You-Know-Who never returns, or there’s nothing Mr. Potter does later in life to prove that he’s as great as that? Their regard will fade. It’s only six years since it happened right now. The further away it gets…”

Dolores formed her hands into fists. “I think Dumbledore will always think he’s special.”

“And that’s something we should investigate. What exactly makes Dumbledore so desperate?” Bolton spread his hands. “But in the meantime, others who are not Dumbledore might start to murmur and question. Do you _really_ want them to do that?”

Dolores was quiet, toying with her own cup. Now that Bolton had made his point, he seemed content to let her do it.

And the more she thought about it, the more Dolores had to admit that he had a point. Dumbledore was different from most of their other enemies. _Those_ enemies would look for a way to undermine Harry’s prestige. They would laugh behind their hands if it turned out that someone discovered her Muggle mother and reported it to the papers.

There would come laughter at the beginning if she revealed it herself, of course. Dolores grimaced. But it was always worth going through a small amount of pain in order to win a bigger prize. That was one of the lessons she was always teaching Harry.

“Have you decided?” Bolton asked gently.

“I’m deciding if I can bear the laughter at the beginning.”

“Is that the only thing that worries you?” Bolton shook his head and smiled in a way that Dolores hoped she could trust. “There are ways to turn even that around. Spin the article. Talk about the courage that it took you to come forwards, when you know there are people out there who will want to use your heritage against you. Talk about how you want your ward to see there’s no shame in what he is. There’s ways and ways, Dolores. All sorts of ways.”

His eyes were gleaming like the heads of nails, and Dolores returned a small smile. “Very well. I trust you to be the one to put me in contact with the reporters.”

“And I trust you to be the one to actually write the article in your head, long before you start speaking with one,” Bolton replied. He held out his cup. A Potter house-elf appeared to fill it. “I do think this deserves some celebration, don’t you?”

“Necessarily,” Dolores replied, and even allowed the elf to fill her cup a little more, something she never did, before she touched glasses with him.

*

Dolores sighed and pushed herself back from the writing desk. It was almost time for dinner, and she was weary of struggling with words that probably wouldn’t all go in the order she imagined them, anyway. She would have to come up with the slant she wanted the article to take, but she had no doubt that the reporter Bolton found would insist on adding his or her own touch to it.

She stepped out of her bedroom and paused with one hand on the wall. Something was wrong. But when she reached out with her mind and senses to the wards, they were still in place, thick, tingling.

She swiftly made her way to Sirius’s bedroom, wondering if he was talking into the Floo in that dangerous way again, but when she opened the door, it was empty. Dolores stood blinking and looking. Of course, he would be in the dining room with Harry.

But when she went downstairs, only Lupin was there, so deep in a book about werewolves that he didn’t look up when she came into the room. Dolores had to cough in that “Hem, hem” way she had used to get attention when she still worked in the Ministry.

Then he only looked up and said, “Oh. Didn’t Sirius and Harry come down with you?”

“No.” Dolores knew what was wrong now. Sirius and Harry should have returned from their jaunt to Diagon Alley well over an hour ago. Sirius was always good about giving her precise times. She turned around and called, “Micky!”

The most senior of the house-elves popped up and began to babble and bow. Dolores disregarded that, and demanded, “When did Mr. Black and Harry return to the house?”

“They are not being returned yet, Miss Dolores.”

Dolores found her wand in her hand without even thinking about it. She wasn’t a warrior. She forced herself to put it away while Remus watched her in wonder. “Thank you.” Micky stared after her with big eyes as she made her way to the Floo. Dolores had to shake her head. Thanking a house-elf? Harry must be rubbing off on her.

She cast Floo powder into the flames and called, “Department of Magical Law Enforcement!”

“Isn’t this a little premature? We don’t know where they are. Maybe Sirius is only playing a prank on us.”

“Please, Lupin, I can tell from your tone that that isn’t true,” Dolores said without turning around, and found the face of an Auror forming in front of her. She nodded to him and said, “I’m Harry Potter’s guardian, and he’s been gone for more than an hour past the time he was appointed to return from Diagon Alley.”

The Auror, to give him credit, only yelped once before he said, “I’ll fetch Minister Bagnold, Miss!” Then he scrambled away, and Dolores leaned back on her heels and waited as patiently as she could.

“I still think this is—”

“Not with people out there who want to take custody away from me,” Dolores said. She watched the flames dance and writhe, to keep her mind away from the disgusting twisting in her own stomach. “Not with former Death Eaters who might leap at the chance to harm the Boy-Who-Lived. He’s not exactly keeping a low profile anymore.”

“Well, I suppose you’re right,” Lupin said, his voice doubtful. “But I still think we should have given Sirius a chance to come back.”

Luckily, Dolores was spared the pressure to answer when Minister Bagnold’s face appeared in the fireplace. “Harry’s missing, you said?”

Dolores nodded, grateful for once that the Minister called Harry by his first name. That meant she would be more committed to proving she cared for him. “Yes. His godfather promised to bring him back by five, and he’s never broken that particular promise. He knows how I worry.”

“Then we’ll send Aurors to Diagon Alley,” said Bagnold firmly. “You haven’t sent anyone yourself?”

Dolores shook her head. “I Flooed your Department first.”

Bagnold turned her head and shouted at someone Dolores couldn’t see, “Florent! Five Aurors to the western end of Diagon Alley, five to the eastern! Tell them to wear their robes and flaunt their wands.” She turned back to Dolores. “I think it’s best if whoever took or delayed them knows we’re looking for them, instead of trying to be discreet.”

Dolores nodded fervently. If it was former Death Eaters or someone else who had reason to fear the Ministry, this might convince them to give Harry back more quickly.

Lupin cleared his throat behind her. Dolores turned around. She supposed it was possible he might know something, although his insensibility so far hadn’t shown it. “What?”

“I didn’t want to tell you this. Sirius made me promise not to, in fact. But he didn’t think you would take it this way.”

Bagnold tried to say something. Dolores held up a hand, said, “Your pardon, Minister,” and went on staring at Lupin, who was tugging on his tattered robe. “What do you mean? What didn’t he think I would take what way?”

Lupin coughed into his sleeve. “He thought you would just see it as a bit of fun. Or not even notice Harry was gone. Sirius—he and Harry are in Grimmauld Place. It was a prank.”

Dolores began to shake a little. She didn’t know which emotion, exactly, was driving her, but she hoped there was nothing but relief on her face as she turned around and said to Minister Bagnold, “Can you still call the Aurors back? It seems it was a prank by Harry’s godfather. He and Harry are well and in one of the Black properties.”

“They haven’t left yet.” Bagnold stared at her, gaze deep and piercing. “You’re sure about this? What is the source of your information?”

“Harry’s tutor, Mr. Lupin.” Dolores closed her hands around each other and ground her fingernails together. Luckily, her hands were below the hearth and out of sight of the Minister. “I apologize for disturbing you so unnecessarily.”

“No, no, it was necessary. You had no way of knowing. This is one of Mr. Black’s pranks?”

“That’s what Mr. Lupin said.” Dolores didn’t turn around, but she still sank enough venom into the words that she felt Lupin flinch.

“Very well.” Bagnold sighed. “I’m glad that Harry’s safe, of course. But I do hope that you speak to Mr. Black and make it clear that this kind of playing with your time and the Ministry’s is unacceptable.”

“Believe me,” Dolores said, “I intend to speak with him.”

There was apparently enough of all kinds of emotion in her voice to make sense to the Minister, because she smiled a little and said, “I can see that you do.” She tipped her head. “Then good luck, Madam Umbridge.”

Umbridge nodded, and closed the Floo, and started to head outside the wards so she could Apparate.

“It was just a joke.”

Her slashing look left Lupin cowering in the corner, something Dolores was more than glad to see. She turned her attention away and rushed towards the Apparition point.

For now, Harry was safe. But she was going to give Black a piece of her mind about _playing_ with her thoughts and her sanity that way.

And she no longer cared how dangerous he was.

_I can be dangerous, too._


	24. Sirius's Mess

Dolores appeared on the pavement across from Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place. She did take a moment to check for Muggles before she cast aside the Disillusionment Charm and started towards the door.

It opened before she could get there, and Harry stepped out. Lupin must not have warned them that she was coming, because he stared at her with huge eyes before he leaned back and called, “Sirius!”

Dolores didn’t bother speaking. It would only be screaming. A few Muggles walked back and forth, or drove, down the street. She wouldn’t air their business in front of them. But Sirius would get his fill of her tongue behind his ancestral walls, yes.

“What? I didn’t know you could shout that loud, Har—”

Sirius’s voice cut off because Dolores had her wand pressed against the underside of his jaw, and she smiled sweetly at him. Then she shoved him back into the corridor. She did it hard enough that Sirius literally choked and flailed around with his hands.

“What is it?” he asked, and his voice was rough and rasping. He bent over at the waist, coughing. Dolores would have been more sympathetic if he hadn’t done—what he had done. “You can’t just come in here and do that!”

Dolores grabbed his hair and hauled his head back, jabbing him in the stomach with her wand this time. The sound of his choked-back breath made her simmer with mad, reeling joy. “And _you_ can’t take my ward and disappear into oblivion,” she snarled back at him. Her vision was streaked with red. “What did you think you _were doing_?”

Sirius flinched and stared at her. He said nothing.

Harry was the one who stepped up and tugged on her sleeve and said, “Miss Dolores, you’re hurting him.”

“Good.” Dolores didn’t look at Harry. One glimpse had been enough to see that he was unwounded. Whether Sirius would remain in that condition remained to be seen. “Then he can suffer a _sliver_ of the pain that I felt when I thought you had been kidnapped.”

“Why did you think I’d been kidnapped?”

Dolores turned to stare at him without letting go of Sirius, and stomped on the foot Sirius tried to slide between her boots. Under that stare, Harry’s eyes fell away before her. “The whole _prank_ was predicated on me having that reaction,” she said, and kicked Sirius’s feet out from beneath him, releasing him as he went down. “Or he wouldn’t have played it.”

Harry mumbled something.

“What? Speak up.” Dolores glared again at Sirius. He still hadn’t started to laugh and joke, which was good in a way, because it meant that she didn’t have to try harder to murder him, but also unexpected.

“I said,” Harry spoke clearly and loudly, lifting his head to meet her eyes, “Sirius said that you wouldn’t be that angry. You would worry just a little. You wouldn’t think I’d been kidnapped.”

“Why the hell _not_ , with people who want custody of you and possible former Death Eaters wandering around?”

She usually tried not to swear in front of Harry, but right now it didn’t seem to matter. Nothing did but the next reply that emerged from Harry’s mouth.

“Because he said you didn’t care about me that much.”

Dolores heard the words with what seemed to be more than her ears. She turned back to Sirius, and her anger was pounding and roaring in her throat. “Did you tell him that?” she whispered, and her voice shook, but her wand didn’t shake, that was the important thing. It was once again pressed to Sirius’s pulse. “How _dare_ you make him think that his current guardian didn’t want him? That’s what the _Muggles_ did. How _dare_ you.”

Sirius’s eyes were wide and still mostly uncomprehending. He did say, after what seemed like most of a minute to think about it, “I didn’t think of it that way. I didn’t know he might take it that way.”

“You bloody well _should_ have.”

Harry reached out and grabbed her sleeve. His eyes were bright and determined as he gazed up at her, and his hand didn’t let go even when Dolores tried to move her arm away. “Can you stop hurting him, Miss Dolores? I know he didn’t mean it.”

“What he _should_ have meant is—”

“It’s okay,” Harry whispered, the same way she had talked to him some of the times when he wanted to make sure she wouldn’t send him back to the Dursleys or to Dumbledore. “What he did was stupid. But he won’t do it again.” He gave Sirius a look that Dolores thought was significant. But she couldn’t read it.

Dolores shut her eyes and worked on hauling back her temper, giving herself _some_ control over her hand on the wand. Slowly, she managed to lower it to her side. She stepped back so Sirius could get up. But she kept her hand on Harry’s shoulder—the way he did on her sleeve—and moved him with her.

Harry didn’t seem to have any objection to that. When Dolores opened her eyes and looked down again, he was smiling gently at her, his head tilted back and his face soft and clear.

“I knew you would come for me. I knew you cared about me. I didn’t listen to Sirius when he said you didn’t.” He leaned his head against her hip.

Dolores gently stroked his hair, and said nothing. She was still furious with Sirius for having played the prank at all, but if it really hadn’t affected Harry that much…she could forgive him. She would just have to make sure that he really never _did_ do anything like that again.

And she wanted to know his motive for saying what he’d said. Just part of the prank, or had he convinced himself that she wasn’t the best guardian for Harry and he was better off trying to take custody of Harry away?

_Never._

Dolores waited for a moment. No one else said anything. Harry had said all he needed to say, in truth, in order to convince Dolores to go gently with Sirius. This was Sirius’s moment. Let him stand up and prove that he could be trusted again, that Dolores didn’t need to send him away.

But he stood there and glared at her. The sullenness was what convinced Dolores he wasn’t dangerous right now. He had been glowing good humor—probably fake, but still—when she’d heard him blackmail Lucius. Right now, he seemed mostly sulky that she wasn’t taking his prank the way he wanted it taken.

“Should I even ask?”

The words seemed to break the wall between them. Sirius leaned forwards and stabbed a finger at her. “You never let Harry have any _fun_! You’re always telling me what time he has to be back by, and he can only keep Pardus if he does this and that, and you’re always yelling at him about manners—”

“Miss Dolores doesn’t yell.”

“Well, _fine_.” Sirius waved his hand, and his face turned red. “But I see her hoisting her eyebrow at you all the time!”

“That’s not the same as yelling, Sirius.” There was a thickness in Harry’s voice that Dolores knew wasn’t tears, if only because she didn’t think Harry would cry for a reason like this. And sure enough, a second later, it came bubbling out as laughter. “It’s _really_ not the same as yelling!”

Dolores concealed a smile, because she thought it would only infuriate Sirius right now. He didn’t seem to know what to do with Harry’s laughter, on the other hand. When he folded his arms, she intervened smoothly. “The reason I do that is because Harry is _seven years old_ , Sirius. That isn’t the same as letting him do whatever he wants. He’s not an adult. And I do expect the adults who take him to Diagon Alley and other places to be _responsible_ ones. Likewise, if they get him a pet that can’t behave, then the pet will have to be taken away.”

Harry tensed, but Dolores ignored that. She wouldn’t remove Pardus without a very good reason. Perhaps the reasons had even changed since Sirius had first got Harry the kitten.

“But Harry doesn’t want to live like that! He doesn’t want someone fussing over him every time, and telling him what he can do, and—”

“Actually, I do.”

Sirius gaped at Harry. Dolores didn’t let anything show on her face. “What? Pup, you _can’t_ be right! No kid wants to go to bed on time and tell adults the truth and be punished! When I was your age, I wanted to sneak into Muggle London and stay up all night and eat ices until my _face_ fell off!”

“But the Dursleys didn’t care about me,” Harry said, apparently to the wall, or Dolores’s robe. “I know all about Muggle London. They didn’t care if I was awake all night or not. I still had to get up at dawn to make their breakfast anyway. I didn’t get a pet. They would have just taken it away.” He took a deep breath that made it sound like something was being dragged up his throat, and then looked appealingly at Sirius. “Sirius, can you just—leave it alone? Believe me?”

Sirius was still standing there, looking between them as if someone had taken away _his_ kitten. Then he sighed. “I’ll believe it. But—I need to talk to your Miss Dolores.” His eyes bored into Dolores for a second before he turned sharply away.

Dolores suspected she knew what he would say, what was behind this “prank.” She gently detached Harry’s hands from her robe and smoothed her hand over his hair when he stared up at her. “Can you be on your own for a little while, Harry?”

“I only want it to be a little while.”

 _Don’t leave me like the Muggles did._ Dolores didn’t need a spell to know what his words would be. She bent down towards him and lightly touched his forehead. “I know. I don’t think this conversation will take long.”

He nodded, but his eyes were sharp in a way that said he was going to hold her to that. Dolores smiled and turned to follow Sirius into the kitchen of Grimmauld Place.

*

“I know you don’t really care about him. I know you only became his guardian to have political power.”

Dolores had locked the door of the kitchen behind her and set up several privacy spells automatically. She paused with one hand on the back of a dining table chair and looked at Sirius. He was stalking back and forth so fast that she wasn’t surprised he wavered and tripped near the counter. He grabbed hold of it and stared at her between strings of his hair.

“You’re not even _trying_ to deny it.”

“I wanted to take custody of him once I realized who he was. No magical child should be left to be raised by Muggles, that’s true, but I would have left him at the proper Ministry department and said good luck to him if he was anyone else.”

“Then you _don’t_ care about him!”

Dolores smiled. “Tell me, Sirius. Did you care about Harry when you went to go chase down Peter Pettigrew on your own? Without even _telling_ other people that he was the traitor, which would have enabled the Aurors to be called out for him?”

Sirius’s hands flexed like claws. “We aren’t talking about that.”

“We’re talking about behavior that another adult thinks means I don’t care about Harry. I only see a duty to ask the same question back.”

“I was grieving. I was emotional. I wasn’t thinking clearly. But _now_ I’m trying to do the right thing by Harry.”

“By undermining his confidence. By making him think that the guardian he trusts is going to abandon him just like the Muggles. By saying—”

“You _don’t_ care about him!” Sirius howled. His face was twitching in a way that made Dolores take careful hold of her wand. “That wasn’t a lie!”

“I do care about him,” said Dolores, and didn’t snap. She knew she would have a hard enough time convincing Sirius to shut up about this and not keep repeating the words around Harry. They would hurt him, but Sirius wouldn’t care about that if he thought he was “rescuing” Harry from her. “Not the same way you do—”

“ _Ha_!”

“But that is because I am not his godfather,” Dolores said, and her glare must have withered Sirius a little, because he hesitated instead of moving forwards to strike her. “I have a _responsibility_ that is different than yours. You may play pranks with him and buy him pets and take him to have fun. I am the one who has to set boundaries and discipline him and explain to him why he has a bedtime.”

“You’re the one he wants to escape,” Sirius whispered, but he wasn’t looking at her now.

“Has he ever said that?”

“How can he _not_ want to escape someone like you?”

Dolores smiled. This situation wasn’t so dangerous after all. What mattered was that she should pick the right argument. “Are you basing your remarks on Harry? Or on the boy you were, desperate to escape his family?”

Sirius’s hand clenched into a fist, down by his hip. Dolores nodded. “I thought so. You were a miserable, unhappy child, Sirius, I won’t deny that. But that’s not the same thing as assuming that anyone who gets a bit of discipline is unhappy.”

“Harry told me about you drilling him in all these _manners_ ,” Sirius spat, as if the word was a patch of poison clinging stickily to his tongue. “And I’ve seen you pinch his shoulder, or his ear.”

“And of course,” Dolores said softly, “what you would do for him is so much better.”

“I would never _pinch_ him!”

“But would you raise him with boundaries, Sirius, if he was yours alone to raise? Or would you teach him to play pranks and laugh and not be sensitive to the currents of politics around him, and then gape at people when they told you that they wanted to take him away from you?”

“You may not be aware of how vicious I can be.”

“I know it. Because of the way you chose to play this prank.”

Sirius’s triumphant look faded, and he lowered his head and fidgeted a little. Then he said, “I just don’t understand how Harry can be _happy_ with you.”

“Because I am such a disciplinarian? Because I have no connection to his parents in the way you do? Do enlighten me, Sirius.”

“Because it’s like—you’re not raising him to be independent of you, or a political player because he has to be. You’re raising him as if he should _enjoy_ politics!” Sirius seemingly gasped for a word for a second, then found it. “As if he’s going to go into _Slytherin_!”

Dolores meant to stand solemn and serious and help Sirius to see the ridiculousness of his words without truly criticizing him. But the words simply struck her, and she reacted before she thought about it.

She laughed.

Sirius heaved himself up into an upright posture that seemed to take quite a bit of work, and looked down his nose at her for a minute. “You can laugh at me all you like,” he said. “But I’m still more dangerous than you think.”

“I’m not laughing because I think you’re pathetic,” said Dolores, although part of her _did_ think that. “I’m laughing because making him a Slytherin was the worst thing you could think of. You didn’t say I was raising him to hate Muggleborns, or to hate his parents, or to be a Dark wizard. A _Slytherin_.” She snorted.

Sirius only looked at her with uncertain eyes, and the last remnants of Dolores’s laughter faded. She suspected that Sirius had reached for that “insult” because that _was_ where his mind was largely stuck. He had been in Azkaban for so many years not that long after he’d left Hogwarts, it made sense that his school memories occupied more of his life than they usually did for someone his age.

That didn’t mean Dolores was going to let him get away with insulting her and challenging her guardianship over Harry.

“If you want Harry to learn something, help teach him, the way I and Lupin do,” she said, and moved towards the door. “But I will not tolerate pranks like this.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“I know how dangerous you are,” Dolores said, pausing with her fingers on the door. “I heard you threaten Lucius.” He went pale. “But you don’t know how dangerous _I_ can be yet. I don’t think you want to find out, Sirius. You really don’t.”

She opened the door and went through, and found Harry hovering outside, his head tilting up immediately when she came out. His back tensed as though he thought someone was going to plunge a knife into it.

“Are you and Sirius all right? Can he go on living with us?”

“Yes, he can.” _That is my strength, that with all my disapproval of Sirius, I can tolerate him better than he can me._ Dolores knelt down in front of Harry. “As long as you’re sure that you want to live with me and don’t want to come be with him.”

“Not—not on our own,” said Harry, and abruptly flung his arms around her.

Dolores didn’t think it was more than a minute before her arms moved, curving around Harry, holding him tight. Even if it was, she thought only Sirius, standing behind them with dazed eyes, would notice.

“Then you won’t have to,” Dolores whispered against Harry’s ear. “I’ll make sure that you don’t have to.”

The tightness of Harry’s arms around her in response was its own answer.


	25. A Place on the Stage

"You look magnificent, Harry."

Harry smiled as he met her eyes in the mirror. It was the kind of smile he could never have given three years ago, brimming with secret satisfaction and assured intelligence. "Thank you, Miss Dolores."

Dolores stepped back and watched indulgently as Harry straightened his dress robes and took a moment to adjust his hair. He had gradually gone from wearing his hair any which way to wearing it how Dolores brushed it for him, and then again to using a hair potion that his ancestors had invented. Now it looked messy but not uncontrollable. Dolores had thought it was a good compromise between Harry Potter the child and Harry Potter the maturing, perhaps dangerous, political ally.

Harry turned and offered his arm to her to escort her down the stairs. Dolores still had to bend a little and it looked a bit ridiculous, but neither was as true as it would have been when he was seven.

"You told me you think Dumbledore has regained strength," he murmured as they walked down the stairs.

Dolores lowered her voice. Even after all this time, neither of them trusted Remus or Sirius with anything sensitive. "Yes. Unfortunately, forcing Lucius to a low power ebb in the Wizengamot did have that effect."

"Will he try to gain custody of me?"

"I think he'll give that up and just go straight to influencing you."

Harry bobbed his head a little as they came around the corner into the dining room. "Then we have to concentrate our next volley on him."

Dolores started to answer, but she didn't get the chance, since the room all around them was exploding with light and laughter.

" _Happy birthday, Harry_!"

Dolores stared at the people piling into the room, dazed. They hadn't told her they were planning a surprise tenth birthday party for Harry, and she had no idea why for a second. Then she scowled a little. They'd wanted to take that away from her, plan something without her.

She didn't have much time to resent it, though, because Sirius snatched her hands and spun her around, and Remus grabbed Harry and did an impromptu dance in the middle of the drawing room. Other people piled out of the kitchen: Draco, Ernest, Pansy Parkinson and Daphne Greengrass who had become Harry's friends this past year with Dolores's reluctant approval, their parents, Minister Bagnold, a few of the Wizengamot members who had proven themselves to be amusing. They surrounded Harry and cast spells that filled the air with fireworks and "wishing charms" that were supposed to encourage his wishes to come true, laughing the whole time.

Dolores supposed she could tolerate this. For now.

"You don't have to do anything today," Sirius said, whirling Dolores around one more time and dumping her in a chair near the kitchen doorway. "The house-elves cooked all the food and made the cake, and we bought all the gifts. You can relax for once. We'll take care of Harry."

"That's the part I'm worried about."

Dolores said it softly, so that Sirius could hear, and his eyes sparked as he looked at her. "What do you think is going to happen to Harry with all these people around?" he asked in a challenging whisper.

"Betrayal. A stab in the back that won't hurt much right now but will produce consequences for years to come."

Sirius opened his mouth, then glanced over his shoulder as the house-elves started carrying food into the drawing room, along with small tables and trays to eat off. His fingers spasmed on hers. "You're a mistrustful and suspicious woman."

"I have reason to be."

Sirius only shook his head and stepped away from her. "It'll be all right," he said, and went over to scoop Harry off his feet and whirl him around in a version of the dance he'd given Dolores. Harry laughed up at him. For a moment, his face was entirely open and trusting.

But then Dolores looked deeper, and saw how still and calm his eyes were, the way they turned and looked at Pansy's and Daphne's parents when no one else saw him looking.

_No. He still remembers the lessons I taught him._

That realization let Dolores sit calmly, and accept a plate of sliced oranges and oatcakes and soft goat cheese and tumbled salted nuts, all the favorites that she hadn't realized Remus knew she liked. She ate them, and laughed at the poor jokes the Greengrasses made, and kept an eye on Harry all the time as he talked with everyone, children and adults alike. She had taught him how to be a gracious host.

And he was. He smiled at something Draco said, and touched the other boy on the shoulder in a way that, Dolores knew, would make Draco feel they were still the best of friends, despite other people sharing Harry's life now. He inclined his head to Astoria, Daphne's little sister, whose parents had probably brought her along because otherwise they would have had to leave her with grandparents or stay home themselves. Astoria was a petite thing, not graceful enough yet for Dolores's taste, but this wasn't an adult party. And after Harry listened to her stumbling wishes for his birthday, he said something that made her smile. The smile let her whole face up. Dolores nodded judiciously. She might make something of herself in a few years.

Sirius joked with Minister Bagnold, doing something that was probably flirting, if the way she blushed was any indication. Then he came over and flopped in the chair next to Dolores, shaking his head. "You don't let him be enough of a child."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Harry. He's like a little adult. You could stop teaching him lessons for one afternoon and let him relax and socialize with his friends."

"What am I letting him do at the moment?" Dolores asked, genuinely curious. Sirius hadn't confronted her like this since the "prank" three years ago when he had pretended to kidnap Harry. Dolores thought things had been going perfectly smoothly lately. It seemed odd he could build up a head of steam about something.

"That's different. You're only doing it because you didn't know about the party and you didn't have a choice." Sirius leaned towards her. "You would have forbidden us to have the party if you knew about it."

"I would have suggested you expand the guest list." Dolores smiled as she watched Harry cast sparks from a practice wand with Pansy Parkinson. "There are a few other people who could have been here."

"But you think Harry should act like an _adult_."

Dolores eyed him. "And you think he is a child after what he endured with the Muggles?"

"He still needs to be able to have fun and enjoy himself! How can he enjoy himself when he's learning about laws and history and the proper way to serve _tea_ all day?"

"You forgot the lessons in Latin," Dolores told him, and used a nut to scoop up a dab of goat cheese. "Harry was the one who insisted on those. He said he was tired of not knowing what the actual incantations he was learning meant."

Sirius flung himself dramatically back in his chair, hands spread. "My _parents_ didn't make me learn Latin, and I'm a _Black_! What are you trying to make Harry into? A Potter? A Wizengamot member? He's _ten_!"

Sirius's voice was drawing too much attention, and Harry turned towards them slightly, one hand tensing. Dolores stood, put down her plate, and escorted Sirius into the next room, which was where the guests had Flooed in. At least it was too early in the party for anyone to want to go home soon. She shut the door and turned to face him, standing in the center of the blue rug that dominated the room. "Tell me what this is really about."

"Harry, and his ability to have fun, and the way you're _ruining_ him."

"At least this round of accusations doesn't come complete with a prank," Dolores said, although she stepped a little further away from Sirius. She didn't think he'd have had time enough to set up a prank since she'd chosen the room, but she had learned not to underestimate him. "What am I ruining him for? And why this dramatic way of putting it?"

Sirius spent a second clenching his fists like Harry. Then he said, "I want him to run around and have fun and play on a broom and ask me for stories and--"

"Be James Potter."

It made Sirius's words cease as if she'd doused him with ice water. He stared at her. "What?" he choked out.

"You want him to be his father." Dolores had thought of that long ago, but she had decided to save the words for when they could do the most good. Admittedly, the confrontation in her mind had been for higher stakes than this, but that was all right. Perhaps she could stop Sirius here and keep him from going further. "You never thought that he lost that chance the night his father died."

"I--of course James was my best friend, and Harry looks like him, and--"

"No. You want Harry to be him. Otherwise, you wouldn't keep up complaining that Harry isn't a 'regular' child in the face of all evidence that he doesn't _want_ to be."

"But--" Sirius choked again and paced in a circle for a second. Then he said, "How can any kid _want_ more lessons? It makes no _sense_!"

Dolores shrugged and watched him. "You wouldn't want them, James wouldn't want them, so that must mean Harry can't want them?"

"Yes--no--Harry just isn't--"

"If you say the word _normal_ , then you'll regret it," Dolores said softly. "You're basing normal entirely on your own definition, on the way you remember being. Harry had enough of being told he was a freak when he was living with the Muggles."

"I would _never_ use that word!"

"But it doesn't matter, not if you're thinking of the concepts. You think of normal children as spoiled pranksters. That's not going to be Harry, ever. If that appalls you, then you can save us all time by walking away now."

Sirius hunched his shoulders and said, "The Muggles did so many things to him. But he never told me they made him feel like he had to grow up."

"Calling him freak and starving him and making him sleep in a cupboard didn't make him feel like he was normal. And then he was plunged into a world that he didn't really understand, where he was a hero and a savior and some people wanted him to go straight back to the Dursleys." Dolores moved in to touch Sirius's shoulder. He could still be an ally. He just had to learn his place. "He's chosen an identity that will save him from that. He could never be in control or defend himself if he was still a simple child."

Sirius stared at the floor in thought. Then he looked up. "You said to me once that he would probably be in Slytherin."

"No one can predict that with one hundred percent certainty. You went into Gryffindor. But I think I can predict it with ninety-five percent certainty."

"I suppose--I can accept that, really." Sirius sounded as if he was speaking through a dry throat. "I just hoped it would be Gryffindor." He gave her a wavering smile. "I suppose this was the last gasp of my hope."

"And does it make you dislike him or think of him as somehow _abnormal_?"

"No, of course not!" Sirius's head popped up, he saw her staring at him, and he lowered it again. "You thought I hated Slytherins enough to go on thinking of him as somehow abnormal."

"I did." Dolores made her voice calmer. If she could get past this without any casualties, including Sirius's trust in her, then she would be happier. "You sometimes talk about the Slytherins you bullied in school as if they've spent years plotting your downfall."

"They bullied me, I didn't bully them!"

"Going after them with four people at once wasn't bullying?"

"They knew _Dark Arts!_ They would have hurt me if I'd tried to fight them on my own!"

"You also knew Dark Arts because you're a Black and you were raised that way." Dolores folded her arms. "Please don't insult my intelligence by implying that you were afraid of them."

Under her stare, Sirius let his head droop until he was looking at the floor. Then he whined, "I might have known Dark Arts, but they knew poisons and potions and all kinds of things. They still could have hurt me."

Dolores allowed herself a roll of her eyes, since he couldn't see it. "I don't really care what kinds of struggles and conflicts you had going on in the past. You can stay up until three in the morning brooding on your wrongs if you want. What I need is some kind of assurance that you won't allow those grudges to translate into affecting Harry if he Sorts Slytherin when he goes to Hogwarts."

Sirius tensed. "You know my worst enemy is the Head of Slytherin."

"I know that you're going to let Harry go on and into Slytherin and let him fight his own battles. If Snape does something wrong to _him_ , then he can report it to us and we'll do something about it. But don't fill Harry's head with tales about Snape."

Sirius looked guilty in a way that made Dolores suspect he'd already done that. She held her breath to increase her patience for a second, then said, "At least promise to hold back on your actions, if it's too late to hold back on your words. Promise me that you won't do anything until Harry actually asks you to."

Sirius blinked. "You're not going to say that I should clear it with you first?"

Dolores shook her head. "With Harry."

"Why?"

"Because he has to be independent of me as much as he can," Dolores said with a little sigh. _While still being partially under my control._ That was the part she would never say aloud, of course, and she had accepted that she couldn't exercise that control with as tight a rein as she had once planned on. It would be fatal for her plans _and_ Harry's politics if someone ran around saying that he did only what Dolores wanted him to do. "But I hope that you don't plan on encouraging him to risk his life or do any of the other stupid things that the _Marauders_ did."

"We've already talked to Harry about how to be a Marauder when he's at Hogwarts..."

"And that's the dangerous part," Dolores told him plainly. "Harry might have some of the same taste in fun that you do, but he doesn't have the same temperament. Is he going to play _harmless_ pranks?"

"Of course! At least as much as ours, anyway..."

"Yes, I know that you could have murdered someone with your pranks," Dolores said sharply, but calmed her voice down a little when she noticed Sirius looking vaguely guilty. "Vaguely" was the best she could hope for. "But Harry might actually _try_. Encourage self-reflection and restraint in his pranking."

"Restraint," Sirius muttered as if it was a dirty word. "Why not just tell us not to talk to him about it anymore?"

"Because that would seem to be a restriction. What we want is _restraint_."

Sirius still looked baffled, but he nodded as if he understood and turned back towards the party. "Can we stop having a deep conversation now? I'm bored and I want to see if Harry actually dances with Pansy."

"Why should he?"

"I might have put him up to it."

Dolores sighed and followed Sirius back into the next room. She supposed that the best she could hope for was Sirius telling her the truth when she went after it and prioritizing Harry's safety above his pranks. He'd never done anything like the "kidnapping" attempt again in the last few years. Harry's safety was the best leash she had on him.

Dolores did pause when she came into the room. There were extra additions, and for a moment she wondered if there were Greengrass or Parkinson relatives she wasn't aware of who might have invited themselves along.

Then she realized that Dumbledore was there, and beside him a scowling man with such dark hair and eyes that Dolores identified him even before she smelled the stink of Potions ingredients that hung around his body. She moved swiftly and silently up beside Harry as Dumbledore bent down over him. Harry looked up at him, unafraid.

_Not a custody attempt. Then what is this?_

"Harry," said Dumbledore affably, "I'm bringing someone by who's wanted to meet you. This is Severus Snape, who's Potions professor and Head of Slytherin House at Hogwarts."

Dolores came up beside Harry. She said nothing, still not sure of Dumbledore's game. He didn't look at her anyway. Snape bent down as though he felt the need to hover over Harry like Dumbledore.

If Dolores hadn't been so close and watching their faces so intently for a hint, she wouldn't have heard Snape's whispered, " _Legilimens_."


	26. Into the Light

 

Harry flinched and blinked, but Dolores knew that wouldn’t matter. Legilimency only needed eye contact for the first few seconds; after that, the Legilimens was in your mind even if you were thrashing around and not looking at them.

So she stepped back and said in as loud a voice as she could, “Professor Snape, why are you _raping my ward’s mind_?”

Dumbledore’s arm jerked in surprise. Snape backed up a step and his hand fell to his wand. Harry immediately moved behind Dolores. She contented herself with giving a faint smile and holding Snape’s gaze.

“I am not sure what you mean,” Snape said a moment later. But his stance didn’t relax.

“Yes, you are,” Dolores continued on, at the top of her voice, ignoring the way the Greengrasses hustled their daughters out of the room. They probably thought they were too young to hear the word “rape.” That was all right. There were still plenty of witnesses. “I heard you utter the word ‘Legilimens.’ Why would you do that if you weren’t planning to mind-rape him?”

“Now, Dolores. I’m sure that you must have misunderstood what dear Severus is doing. A professor at Hogwarts would never—”

“I have yet to hear a justification from the professor for trying to rape Harry.”

By then, Sirius had come up to her side, and Dolores felt the hungry way he looked at Snape. _Sirius would just love to have something that would destroy his enemy,_ she thought, and fell silent for a second so Sirius could add his two Knuts.

“That’s a question we’d all be interested in hearing the answer to, I think.” Sirius polished his fingernails on his robes for a second and looked at them. When he looked up again, his hand held his own wand. “What did you do to my godson, _Snivellus_?”

“ _Did_ you try to use Legilimency on Harry, Severus? If that is the case, I am, in fact, shocked and upset.”

Dolores turned abruptly on Dumbledore. She saw at least part of his plan now, even if she was missing most of the subtleties. Make Harry distrust Snape if he was caught, and use that to strengthen his own position as one of Harry’s “allies” and perhaps to push Harry away from becoming part of Slytherin House when he went to Hogwarts.

“I really doubt that you didn’t hear him, Dumbledore. You were as close as I was.”

“My dear—”

“I am not your dear. I am an outraged guardian who wants to know exactly why you denied your professor was mind-raping my ward at first and why you now appear to believe me.”

Dumbledore only stared at her. Dolores kept her head up and her lips clamped together. There was no temptation to laugh when she could still feel the way Harry held onto the back of her robes. Nothing should ever hurt or frighten him, not when he was going to be so powerful in the wizarding world. It was like someone getting away with threatening the Minister.

“You were close enough,” Dolores said. “You were close enough to hear him cast the Legilimency spell, too. And he’s on your staff, has been for a _decade_. I doubt you didn’t know he could use Legilimency. Or that he hasn’t used it on someone else before, probably on your orders. Don’t play the innocent with _me_ , Dumbledore. I’ll be happy enough to go to the Aurors and part with my Pensieve memories and take Veritaserum. That means everyone will know that you have a mind-rapist teaching at your school by tomorrow.”

Dumbledore winced. “I wish you wouldn’t keep calling Severus a mind-rapist, my—Miss Umbridge.”

“That’s what he is. Why else would he use Legilimency on a minor who’d done him no harm, and who hasn’t even met Snape before? Why would he?” Dolores spun to face Snape before Dumbledore could say anything else. “Why did you?”

Snape was silent, his wand down at his side now. His eyes darted back and forth between her and the Headmaster.

And Dolores saw the moment when he made the decision to preserve himself and turn his back on the man who would have made _him_ the scapegoat.

“It was indeed on the Headmaster’s orders.” Snape stood straight and tall as if he was a soldier giving a report. He didn’t look at Dumbledore now. “He told me that we were losing control of Potter, and there was too much we didn’t know about him. I was to snatch what I could, anything important that hovered near the surface of his mind. If I was caught, I was to say it had been my own idea. If I wasn’t, then we would know something more about Potter than we already did.” He paused.

Dumbledore was as still as a boulder beside Dolores. She didn’t bother to look at him. She could feel the messages he was sending Snape with his eyes, anyway.

“I was to look, in particular, for the secret of the loyalty binding Potter to you, and ways to disrupt that loyalty.”

“If you would only tell the truth, Severus, my dear boy—”

“Harry’s loyal to Dolores because she treats him well,” Sirius said, so loudly that Dolores almost jumped. It seemed like it was mainly the grip Harry had on her robes that held her to the floor. “And he likes living with her. He’s not loyal to Albus because Albus was the one who left him with the _bloody Muggles_.” He turned and stared at Dumbledore. “Is that _really_ so hard to understand?”

“What Muggles?” Snape asked quickly.

“Lily’s sister and her husband.”

Snape pivoted on his heel to stare at Dumbledore. “You said he was somewhere safe in the Muggle world. With Tuney hardly qualifies as _safe_.”

“Tuney,” Dolores heard Harry mutter to himself behind her, and he giggled. She reached back and caressed his hair, but couldn’t smother a smile of her own. Now and then Harry could still be a child, and if he wanted to revel in awful nicknames for the Muggles, she would let him do so.

“Of course it does,” said Dumbledore, and his voice was mild and unruffled. If there was a bit of wildness around his eyes, Dolores didn’t think someone standing further away would see that to remark on it. “It meant that protections could be founded based on his mother’s blood. And Petunia did take him in, despite whatever resentment she might have held towards Lily in the last years of her life—”

“It did not keep the Muggles from abusing him,” said Dolores, and let her hand stroke Harry’s head again.

“Of course it did not,” said Snape. He had stopped looking at Sirius entirely, even though Sirius still had his wand drawn on Snape. He was staring at Dumbledore instead, his body swaying slightly back and forth. “You knew what Petunia was like. What threats did you use to make her take Potter in, old man?”

“No threats were necessary,” said Dumbledore gently. “An explanation of reality was enough.”

“Threats,” Snape said, with what sounded like a sigh of satisfaction. “Ah, well.” He turned to Dolores and jerked his head at her. She only stared at him, having no idea why he thought she would obey him, and his face flushed. “I want to apologize to Potter,” he said between gritted teeth.

“I don’t want to hear the apology,” Harry said at once.

“My ward doesn’t want to hear it right now,” Dolores said. “Perhaps you should think about why we shouldn’t press charges, Professor Snape. Using Legilimency on a minor is illegal and has been for hundreds of years.”

Snape’s flush deepened. Dolores spoke before he could, though, glancing at Dumbledore and turning her head thoughtfully to the side. “Of course, if you were acting on orders, perhaps with a statement that you had to do these things or be threatened with the loss of your job or similar consequences…”

“ _I_ will submit my Pensieve memories to the Wizengamot,” said Dumbledore. “And take a Veritaserum test. I did not threaten Severus.”

“He did not have to,” Snape said, and Dolores frowned at him. She was trying to find a way out for him, one that would also trap Dumbledore, and he persisted in tangling himself further in the coils. But a second later Snape added, “I swore a vow to keep Potter safe. All he had to do was say reading Potter’s mind was necessary to that safety, and I was bound to do what I could by the vow itself.”

 _Who goes about swearing vows when they don’t have to? And probably Unbreakable, to be compelled to do it._ But Dolores hid her contempt with a simple nod. “I see. In that case, charges will probably be unnecessary.”

“I’m so glad that you’re seeing the truth of what’s best for Harry.”

“As long as you do what you can to keep Harry safe with the fact in mind that Albus Dumbledore left the boy with abusive Muggles,” Dolores added helpfully.

Snape turned his head before Dumbledore could speak again, and looked him right in the eye. “I will remember that. I will remember it forever.”

“I’m _so_ glad we could have this chat, in that case,” Dolores went on, stepping a little to the side and putting her hand on Harry’s shoulder commandingly. Reluctantly, he came out from behind her. When she touched him like that, she was telling him to put on his public persona, so he couldn’t hide. “I still want Harry to go to Hogwarts. I think it’s an important part of his heritage and a good opportunity for him. But of course I couldn’t let him go if there were people there who might go raping his mind on a regular basis.”

It seemed to her that Snape turned pale as he met Harry’s eyes. But there was no sign that he was going to use Legilimency again. He only gave a sharp nod and said, “I will not use Legilimency on the boy again unless it is for his protection.”

“I can tell you that it never will be,” Dolores said swiftly, because she could just imagine all the ways Dumbledore would try to maneuver around that prohibition. “Harry is smart enough to tell a responsible adult if he feels threatened.”

“How unlike his father, then.”

Sirius bristled, but Harry only moved a step forwards and took the stage. “I don’t know very much about my father. From what I know, though, he _wouldn’t_ have told someone if he was in danger. He would have kept the truth to himself because he thought it was exciting.”

Sirius chuckled, and Snape turned paler still. Dolores wondered what that was about, but she knew she wouldn’t get an answer right now. Perhaps she could ask Sirius after Snape left—or Remus, since he also knew the origin of the pranks James Potter had played on Snape.

“I’m never going to do that.” Harry threw his head back a little. From the corners of the room, Dolores could feel those valuable witnesses watching. “I love my life too much. And I know that someone might try to take advantage of me being in trouble and take me to Voldemort—”

Flinches, hissing, indrawn breaths. Snape was one of the people who flinched, Dolores saw.

“So I’ll always tell someone the instant something happens that puts me in danger,” Harry said. His face was stern and true, his eyes gleaming. _He could pass for a Gryffindor right now_ , Dolores thought, warm with pride. “I’ll never try to fight something on my own when I can’t do that. An adult should defend me.”

“Very wise of you to have raised the boy that way,” said Dumbledore, breaking the moment—but only after it _had_ been a moment. He gave a faint bow to Dolores. “But you understand that I couldn’t know you had raised him that way until now. I had to have Severus look.”

“No, you did not,” Dolores said. “And while I don’t think it’ll do any good to press charges on Professor Snape, I haven’t decided about _you_ yet.” She turned to Harry. “What do you think we should do with him?”

Harry spent a moment studying Dumbledore. He did keep his eyes determinedly away from his face, though. That satisfied Dolores, since she knew Dumbledore was also a Legilimens. “I don’t think it would work. There’s no way to get him a fair trial, since he’s part of the Wizengamot. And lots of people hate him or adore him. I think it’s better to give him a few rules if I’m going to go to Hogwarts.”

“Very wise, Harry. And what should those rules be?”

“He can’t use Legilimency on me the way he was going to have Snape do,” Harry said promptly. “Or any other way. And he can’t try to persuade me to join Gryffindor House or whatever Light movement he has to fight against Voldemort. And he can’t lie to me. And he can’t talk with me alone in his office.”

Dolores smiled, looking down at Harry. She didn’t care who saw it. They would either think she was really fond of Harry, or pretending fondness, and either way suited her plans. “Good rules, Harry.” She looked up and nodded at Dumbledore. “Do you think you can follow them, Headmaster?”

“This is absurd. Harry will not even be going to Hogwarts for a year.”

“I know. It works out, don’t you think? That gives you more time to absorb the rules and decide whether you’re going to follow them—or not.”

Dumbledore lifted his eyes again. Dolores looked at his forehead. He wasn’t about to read her mind in her own home. She was still a little surprised that he’d had Snape do so, although the double-pronged plan he had had explained it.

“I think some misunderstandings are happening here. What Severus did was not a crime—”

“Legilimency on a minor,” Ernest said, stepping up beside them. His grey hair was pulled back with a black leather band, and he looked as if he was enjoying himself immensely. _His grudge might be against Lucius,_ Dolores thought, _but he won’t mind reducing Dumbledore’s power, either._ “That can be verified either by Pensieve memories or Veritaserum. That’s illegal, Albus.”

“Madam Umbridge said she wasn’t going to press charges.”

“Because she understands what happened, and Professor Snape has promised that he won’t do it again.” Ernest glanced at Snape, who nodded. “You can’t backtrack now and declare it not illegal.”

“Now and then, a professor who knows Legilimency has to use it on a student to verify that the student is safe, or didn’t cheat, or doesn’t have a plan that might put them in danger—”

“And part of the plea bargain you made for Severus Snape to stay out of Azkaban was that he would be under constant supervision, and never use the Mind Arts without permission from the Ministry. Or am I misremembering his trial?”

Dumbledore looked like a snail trying to remember where it had left its shell. He said stiffly, “You aren’t misremembering, Mr. Bolton.”

“I didn’t think so.” Ernest moved a step nearer, his hair swishing, and lowered his voice. “You’ve lost, Albus. Go home. Try to think up some other method to relieve your obsession with Mr. Potter than the rape of his mind.”

Dumbledore opened his mouth, maybe to say that Legilimency wasn’t mind-rape, but he obviously realized that he couldn’t win with the crowd against him the way it was at the moment. He turned around and marched back towards the Floo. Dolores decided she would figure out how to bar it against him, although that was hard to do for an individual person. It was easier to do for a specific place, but she didn’t want to close off Hogwarts.

_It doesn’t matter what kind of research I have to do. I’ll figure out how to do it._

“Bye-bye, Snivellus,” Sirius sang under his breath as Snape followed Dumbledore. Other than that name, Dolores thought, she had to admit she was also impressed by Sirius’s maturity.

Snape’s back stiffened, but he gave no other sign that he’d noticed as he stepped into the flames.

Sirius laughed, flinging his head back. Then he turned and crushed Ernest’s hand in a strong, wringing shake before he called out, “Are we really going to let someone who tried to upset my godson interrupt his birthday party?”

It took a moment, and a lot of gaping from the children, but the party slowly started to flow back together again. Remus came forwards to bring Harry back into the circle of presents and the debate about which one he should open first.

Dolores was about to follow, to make sure that none of the gifts were cursed or otherwise unsuitable, when Sirius grabbed her in a hug. Dolores stood there, blinking, and meeting Harry’s eyes over Sirius’s shoulder. Harry only shook his head in the way that meant she was on her own for now, and snatched a silver-wrapped present from the pile. Draco immediately pushed forwards, shouting, “ _I_ got that for you!”

“Thank you,” Sirius breathed into her ear. “I couldn’t come up with anything except cursing them, and that wouldn’t have worked.”

Dolores patted his back. “Well,” she said, stepping away as soon as Sirius let her go, “maybe you can see some of the value to my teaching Harry how to do political maneuvers now?”

“Yeah,” said Sirius, and his smile was gleaming and manic. “I really can. And I think it’s about time _I_ took a lesson in that, too.” He winked at her.

“I thought you already knew how to do that.”

“I do. But I haven’t _done_ it.”

And Sirius turned back to watch Harry open his presents, leaving Dolores to watch his back thoughtfully.


	27. So Many Gifts

“I don’t know why people got me so many _clothes_.”

Dolores chuckled and let the fine cloth of the dress robes, and the ties, and the tunics, and the ordinary robes, and the gloves, and all the other garments that Harry’s allies and admirers had bought him, cascade through her fingers onto the bed. “It’s an easy way to give an expensive gift that looks useful.”

“They could have got me _books_.”

“I suspect they didn’t know which ones you already have in your library.” She and Sirius and Remus did, of course, which meant their gifts to Harry had all been books.

Harry sighed and set about looking through the clothes himself. “I’m not wearing _this_ hideous thing,” he said, holding up a set of dress robes with lace on the cuffs and hem. “Or _these_. I know gloves can be resized, but I don’t think we can do anything about the color. It looks like a Crup was sick on it. And what about this? Do they think I’m a _girl_?”

Dolores obediently removed the clothes Harry had complained about, studying them. The parasol and the gloves might make a fine gift for someone else. As for the dress robes, resized, they would do for Sirius. He would think it was hilarious to wear them if he ever attended a ball or a session of the Wizengamot.

“You checked them all for curses, right?”

“No. I would have just placed a mass of unchecked material in the middle of your bed and waited for you to get your fingers nipped off.”

“Well, you tried it last year.”

“None of those were fatal curses, and it showed that you need to check for them at all times,” Dolores pointed out, and wrinkled her nose when she saw the mark at the bottom of the gloves. Not as fine as they looked, then. She would have to alter it to the mark of one of the more expensive shops before she tried to bribe anyone with them.

“Fine,” Harry muttered, and began waving the practice wand she had got him over the robes and other clothes, speaking quick detection charms. Dolores watched him critically. His muscle memory was nearly perfect, as it should be, after years of practice. But there was still a wobble when he moved his wrist a certain way…

“Stop.”

Harry knew to freeze in position when she used that tone. Dolores leaned in and closely studied his wrist. There was a bump there that she didn’t remember seeing before, but she was sure that it didn’t come from a curse she had missed embedded in the gifts or anything like that. It was something else.

“Did anything ever happen to this wrist?” she asked, and turned his hand back and forth.

“I think Dudley sprained it once. Or maybe broke it,” Harry said, voice soft and solemn as it always was when he talked about his Muggle cousin. “It’s not like we went to Healers to check.”

“Broken and improperly healed,” Dolores decided, after casting a few spells of her own. “Yes. It is causing a slight wobble with any motion you make with your wand to the right.”

“Well, it can’t be _that_ bad, right? Or you would have figured it out before now. Someone would have noticed something.”

Dolores looked calmly into Harry’s eyes until he dropped both his gaze and his challenging tone. “Sorry, Miss Dolores.”

“We weren’t looking for it before,” Dolores said. “And you haven’t cast this many delicate spells all in a row.” They were usually practicing more impressive spells, for entirely understandable reasons. “We will correct it now.” She concentrated and spent a moment reciting the incantation to herself, since she hadn’t used it in years, then launched it at Harry’s wrist with a swish of her hand. “ _Episkey hodie._ ”

Harry gasped aloud and bent over as the bones rebroke and positioned themselves with a series of sharp snaps, then sealed back together. He stared at Dolores with eyes filmed over with tears. “That _hurt_.”

“Of course it did,” Dolores said, and put her wand away while she smiled gently at him. “Because I was healing it. And it was set improperly the first time.”

Harry rubbed his wrist, and said nothing. Dolores nodded at the pile of clothes on his bed. “Let’s see you cast the detection charms again.”

This time, Dolores could make out nothing wrong with the wand movements, and she smoothed down Harry’s hair as he moved in to gather up the ones he would keep. “Think of that when you notice imperfections in your casting and your politics. No price is too great to pay to perfect what you have.”

Harry gave her a long enough glance that Dolores thought he might really be holding a grudge over the bone-setting. But then he consented to lean against her briefly before he began to put the gifts away in his cupboards and on the bookshelves.

Dolores went down and ordered a celebratory dinner from the house-elves. Considering everything they had accomplished together in the last forty-eight hours, if was the least they deserved.

*

“I don’t really know what to do with this letter. I don’t think I know the people who sent it.”

Dolores looked up. Harry was turning the letter back and forth in his hands, and only the lesson he had received the day before in the importance of detection charms let Dolores keep calm when she saw that. “Who is it from?”

“Someone named Arthur Weasley. Something about how he knew my parents and he’s going to have a boy the same year as mine at Hogwarts, and he wants to know if we can meet and get to know each other.”

Dolores extended her hand and snapped her fingers authoritatively. Harry let her have the letter. Dolores thought he was rather relieved. He seemed to have no idea what to do.

Dolores scanned the letter. As Harry had said, it was short, and the information about Arthur’s name and family—and his son’s name, Ron—was all it contained. Dolores put the letter down next to her bowl and took a thoughtful spoon of her clear soup.

She was sure that Dumbledore was behind this reaching-out, and she wondered for a moment whether Dumbledore hoped to plant a spy in the house, or whether he only hoped to encourage Harry’s “Light” and “Gryffindor” tendencies. Probably the latter. It wasn’t as though Dolores would allow the Weasley parents to look around their house unhindered, and a ten-year-old boy would make a poor spy.

_Unless he’s Harry. But Harry’s special._

“Do you think I should reply to them?” Harry was studying her, without looking like he was studying her. Dolores was impressed at how hard it was for her to tell. “I mean, aren’t these the sorts of people you want to keep me away from?”

“It’s one thing if you associate with them and reach out first. It’s another thing if they’re the ones who want to spend time with _you_.”

“But are people like the ones on the Wizengamot going to know the difference from the outside?”

“I can always correct them if they have questions about that. Or Ernest can.”

Harry spent another few minutes eating his porridge, stirring the chopped raspberries around in it, while he stared at the letter. Dolores had finished, and she spent her time watching him, instead. She thought she knew what decision he would make. She was more interested in the logic he would use to justify it.

“It could be a good thing if we have people thinking that I have friends influenced by Dumbledore,” Harry muttered. He looked up at her. “But you wouldn’t let me be friends with Neville Longbottom three years ago. What’s different about the Weasleys?”

“Now, you’re older and you have the training that I wanted you to have. A seven-year-old has no _discretion_ , Harry. You could have been influenced in undesirable ways. Now I think you have enough sense of yourself and your desires not to have that happen to you. And I doubt this Weasley child will have received any training of any kind.”

Harry hesitated. “He might tell me that Muggles are wonderful, or that Muggleborns are never abused, or that Dumbledore is great.”

Dolores gave him a gentle smile. “And are you going to believe him, the way you might have when you were seven?”

“Don’t be stupid, Miss Dolores. I was never going to agree with him that Muggles are wonderful. Or harmless. I suppose he might say it that way.”

“The other things?”

Harry paused, then nodded a little. “I suppose I might have. Do you think Dumbledore would just show up unannounced if I accept this invitation, though?”

“That’s why you’re going to have this Ron Weasley over to visit at our house. If you’re asked, you can always say that you have more money and the duty of hospitality falls on you.”

Harry relaxed. “All right. That’s fair. Are you going to supervise us?”

“Do I need to?”

Harry’s smile spread slowly across his face, as if he was absorbing the impact of a promised treat for the first time. “No. You don’t. But can you make sure that you keep Sirius busy when Ron’s here? He said something once about knowing the Weasleys, and he might try to interfere.”

“Sirius is going to be too busy to _breathe_ in the next few months,” Dolores promised, and watched in approval as Harry cleaned up the remnants of his breakfast. She couldn’t believe that she had once thought he might need more guidance than this, that he might be weak and incapable.

_To be fair, Dumbledore thought the same thing._

*

“I don’t _want_ to visit the Wizengamot.”

“I don’t know why. You have the political acumen. I know that. And you have the loyalty to Harry that he needs someone on the Wizengamot to have. And you’ll delight in making Dumbledore show his arse in front of everyone.”

“Now that I think about it, there’s a great prank I can play with a spell that cuts away someone’s robe and turns them around—”

Dolores rolled her eyes and tucked the resized robes with lace cuffs and hem that Harry had got for his birthday into Sirius’s arms. “You don’t have to take everything I say so literally. Put these on.”

Sirius scrambled the robes around in his arms until he could get a look at them. Then he began to snicker, very loudly, and promptly stripped off the robes he was wearing. Dolores shook her head and turned her back, glad his room had no mirror on the opposite wall. Along with being overly literal, Sirius was overly impulsive.

“This is going to cause the perfect stir,” Sirius said happily, and there was a sound of buttons snapping all at once, courtesy of a charm, that let Dolores know it was safe to turn around again. “I can’t wait to flounce up to some of the older pure-bloods and ask them where the lace on _their_ robes is.”

“You must tell me what they say.” Dolores gave him a little push towards the door. “The Wizengamot session is supposed to start any minute. I’m sure that you’ll think up a plausible reason for going by the time you get there.”

“You’re not coming?” Sirius turned around and gave her a hurt look.

“I promised Harry that I wouldn’t actively supervise his meeting with Weasley. That hardly means I’m about to leave him alone in the house with one of Dumbledore’s minions, especially when you told me that Remus wasn’t feeling well enough today to keep up with active children.”

“I don’t think you could describe a ten-year-old child as a _minion._ His parents, maybe. Arthur and Molly are good people, but they were even more loyal to Dumbledore and his Order than I was.”

“How _could_ they be?”

“They usually did what Dumbledore told them to do.” Sirius’s grin flashed hard enough to illuminate the room for a minute. “I didn’t.”

Dolores nodded a second later. “Then go to the Wizengamot and make sure that you aren’t interfering with the Weasley child’s visit, either. I am more than enough protection if he needs it.”

Sirius shrugged, which settled the seam of the resized robes more neatly in place. “You are. Merlin knows why or how it happened, but you are.” Then he winked and stepped past her, gently escorting her out of his room with a hand on her shoulder. “And I’ll make sure that I report on who seems outraged to see me, and who thinks it’s funny.”

“You do that,” Dolores said absently. She had heard the voices below begin, and of course the Weasley boy had not come through the fireplace by himself. There was an adult voice joining in down there.

“He’ll be all right, Dolores.”

She looked up, long enough to see Sirius leaning in towards her. He hesitated as if he was about to say something else and was thinking better of it, then nodded and shook her shoulder and her hand at the same time.

“He’ll always be all right,” he repeated, and then slid down the banister to the first floor, which contained the fireplace that Dolores and Harry usually took to the Ministry. It would, conveniently, keep him out of sight of anyone on the floor immediately below.

Dolores rolled her eyes, and walked with light steps a few doors down. When she opened that door, there was nothing in the room but a mirror. She touched her wand to the glass, only thinking the incantation instead of saying it—with the force of long habit—and the mirror lit softly with a flickering, candle-like image of the room downstairs where Harry was greeting the Weasley boy and his father.

Both Weasley had truly unfortunate ginger hair. Dolores had to smile. She knew the Malfoys and Weasleys had a long-standing feud for other reasons, but it seemed plausible that Lucius would have hated them anyway, for not having the sense to charm their hair some other color long ago.

“It’s nice to meet you, Harry. I’m Arthur Weasley, and this is my son, Ron.” The man ushered the boy forwards with a tug on his robe, and the boy ducked his head and muttered a few awed words, eyes fixed on Harry’s scar.

Dolores saw the way Harry’s smile turned a shade cooler. The Weasleys had just lost whatever chance they might have with him.

But his voice was perfectly polite as he said, “Yes, it’s nice to meet you, too, Mr. Weasley. Do you want to go outside and fly, Ron?”

Ron opened his mouth, but didn’t get to speak before Arthur said, as if casually, “There was something else I wanted to talk to you about before you do that, Harry. You see, I knew your parents, and I knew something about their politics. They were great friends of Albus Dumbledore. I think they would want you to—”

“You don’t really know what my parents would want me to do,” Harry cut in. His voice was soft, but not gentle. “They’re dead. You knew them well at one point. So you probably knew they wouldn’t have wanted me to grow up with abusive Muggles. I assume Headmaster Dumbledore knew the same thing. He dropped me off on my aunt’s doorstep anyway.”

Arthur was silent and staring. Ron only looked uncertainly back and forth between his father and Harry. His thoughts were probably more on brooms than on the political undercurrents he wouldn’t have been trained to understand, Dolores thought.

She felt a mild contempt for Arthur, but then, his son wasn’t famous and would never have to deal with politics until he was older or ran into Malfoys. She supposed she couldn’t blame him for not giving Ron that training.

“But you have your godfather living with you. He must have told you—”

“He’s told me lots of stories about my parents, sure. But he also agrees that Miss Dolores is the one who can raise me the best.”

Arthur continued to stare. Harry stared back. Dolores smiled. Harry had obviously seen there was no reason to play normal little boy with Arthur. He was too loyal to Dumbledore to be fooled.

After a few seconds, Arthur’s shoulders slumped, and he sighed. “All right, boys. Have fun. I’ll be back to get you in two hours, Ron.” He turned and disappeared into the Floo without saying goodbye. Dolores raised her eyebrows. She thought the Malfoys might also disapprove of his manners.

“What was all that about?” Ron asked, looking at Harry cautiously.

Harry smiled at him. “Boring grown-up things. Parents are boring sometimes, aren’t they? And we really _can_ fly. Let’s go!” He ran towards the pitch, and if he would never be a normal careless child, he was doing a good imitation of it.

Ron hesitated, then ran after him. Harry said something else as he passed out of the mirror’s range, and Ron laughed.

Dolores leaned back and ended the spell, smiling a little. Harry had chosen not to try and convert the adult Weasley, cutting his losses.

But he might succeed better with the son.


	28. Mischief Makers

Dolores raised her eyebrows. Her first impulse when the bedraggled-looking owl soared through the window had been to clean it of mites and disease, but then it had crash-landed in the middle of their table, nearly upsetting Remus’s bowl of cereal, and Harry had shaken his head at it.

“That must be Ron’s owl,” he muttered. “He told me it looked like that.”

Dolores had separated the letter from the owl’s leg and held it out to Harry, but Harry only looked at it for a second before he handed it back to Dolores. “It’s addressed to you, not me,” he explained, before turning back to his breakfast.

Dolores had read over the letter, and still thought she probably didn’t understand all of it. Arthur Weasley told her that his son had enjoyed the visit and he wanted to thank her and Harry for their hospitality.

Then he went on to say, _It can’t be true, of course, that Harry was placed with abusive Muggles. We know all sorts of people who would gladly have taken him in, including people who worked closely with James and Lily during the war. Why did he tell Ron those stories about Muggles? Can you please write back to me?_ You, _not Harry. While I know that you’re trying to encourage him to have his independence, I would rather see the issue from a perspective that is not a child’s._

“Tell me what you think of this, Harry,” Dolores said, and slid the letter across the table to him.

Harry read it, a muscle in his face twitching. Then he pushed himself back from the table and stalked over to lean on Sirius’s chair. Sirius hadn’t deigned to put in an appearance at breakfast yet.

“Harry?”

“He has no reason to doubt it,” Harry said quietly, staring out the window that looked into the water gardens. The Potter house-elves had wanted to build it, saying that there had been one in James’s childhood home, and Dolores had seen no reason to forbid them. “I didn’t tell Ron a lot, but I told him _some._ Why does Mr. Weasley think I’m making it up?”

 _Ah._ Harry would have been sensitive to that insinuation, of course, after the times he’d told Muggles about the problems with his family and had them ignore him. Dolores stood and moved around the table to put her hand on Harry’s shoulder.

“I don’t think he disbelieves you, as such. I think he’s looking for a reason to decide the situation was exaggerated.”

“Why?”

“So he can stay allies with Dumbledore. He’ll likely be forced to break with him if it’s true that he placed you with abusive Muggles.”

Harry turned to stare at her. “ _Break_ with him? But it’s not his fault. He probably never even knew where I was. He probably believed Dumbledore when he said I was safe.”

“I know. But this is the power of your name, the kind of power I’ve been trying to tell you about.” Dolores calmly held his eyes. “Imagine you’re an adult, if you can. Imagine that you have a friend—Draco, let’s say. Draco dies, and his child is placed somewhere. An ally tells you that child is safe. Years later, you find out that the opposite is true, that the child is abused and unloved. Would you still remain allies with the man or woman who lied to you?”

Harry’s hand curled like a claw against Sirius’s chair. “No,” he whispered.

“So, you see.” Dolores touched his hair. “We can’t always take you as an example for everyone.” Harry nodded; she had taught him that. “Most people don’t have your political impact on things. But I _think_ we can take you as an example for this. Weasley doesn’t want to believe that Dumbledore would do something so horrible. But he’ll have to, unless you deny it.”

Harry’s mouth worked for a second. Then he said, “Of course I’m not going to deny it.”

“Good. I’ll need to be the one to write back to him, because he addressed it to me, and that’s courtesy. But you can watch over my shoulder and have me write down anything that you particularly want to say.”

Harry stood staring at her for so long Dolores wondered if she had food on her face. Then he said, “I know you tell me that you’re not a good person.”

“I’m not,” Dolores said smoothly. Just like teaching Harry to revere his mother and not her _as_ his mother, that was only self-protection, the truth put out there so someone accusing her of it someday couldn’t alienate Harry.

“But you’re—” Harry flailed for words. “You’re the only one who respects me as much as you do. Who lets me have as many choices as you do.”

Dolores blinked, honestly surprised. “Sirius doesn’t?”

“He asks me where I want to go to eat or what kinds of presents I want, but. Not things like this.”

Dolores found herself nodding. Now that Sirius was going to the Wizengamot sessions, maybe he would have more important things to talk with Harry about, but of course Harry wouldn’t care as much about presents and restaurants as he would about power and choices.

_Not when I have had the teaching of him._

“Let me finish my breakfast, and then we’ll write to the Weasleys together, you and I.”

*

“I have a message for you, Dolores.”

Sirius’s eyes and face contained such a strange mixture of emotions that Dolores had no idea what he was about to tell her. She palmed her wand, just in case, as she moved away from the ladder to the owlery.

“Did you insult Augusta Longbottom at some point?”

“Early on in Harry’s custody,” Dolores said calmly. “I wanted to distance him from people who had worked with Dumbledore—before I found out that some of them could be reasonable, of course.” She nodded at Sirius.

“Well, she came up to me in the Wizengamot today and demanded to know if your ‘accusations’ against Dumbledore were true. Of course I told her they were, and assured her that Dumbledore made it worse by bringing Snape along to his party.” Sirius fell silent and rapped his fingers against the ladder’s rungs.

“And?” Dolores asked with exaggerated patience.

“She said she was no fan of yours, but if it was true that Dumbledore had treated Harry that badly, he’d obviously lost control of his faculties, and she couldn’t continue to follow him any longer.”

Dolores looked down at the floor to hide her smile. Then she looked up again. “And of course you told Madam Longbottom that it was true.”

“I did. She didn’t seem pleased about the knowledge that Snape could use Legilimency, either. Apparently the Board of Governors sends out some kind of newsletter on a regular basis.” Sirius rolled his eyes. “And of course Augusta is the kind of person who would read that. That information about Snape should have been mentioned in the newsletter when he was hired. It wasn’t, she said.”

Dolores thought she would have liked to be able to purr at _that_ news. “Then Dumbledore could find himself in more legal trouble, if he was supposed to inform the Board of Governors when he hired Snape.”

Sirius nodded. “Do you _really_ think Snivellus is going to testify against Albus, though?”

“Lose the insulting nickname, Sirius, if he does become an ally. And he’s already distanced himself from him; we saw that at the party. If Dumbledore sacks him, he might have a layer of legal deniability, but it’s going to be fragile. How he tolerated a Legilimens working for him for _ten years_ without reporting it to the Board of Governors…”

Sirius nodded. Then he started fidgeting with the rung of the ladder again.

“Speak up.”

“W-what?”

“What else happened at the Wizengamot? It must be something more than Madam Longbottom approaching you, or you wouldn’t be dancing like this?”

“I am not _dancing_ ,” Sirius said, looking disgusted, but he took his hand away from the ladder. “I don’t understand how Dumbledore could have messed up this badly. He put Harry with the Muggles. Why did he do that? Didn’t he know that people wouldn’t like it?”

Dolores shrugged. “He probably thought that no one would realize where Harry was before Hogwarts. Remember that people would ask him what had happened to Harry, and he would only smile and shrug and say that he was being cared for by a loving family? That wasn’t a clue on which to search.”

“And if Harry had stayed with the Dursleys…what do you think would have happened then?”

_He would have come to Hogwarts dependent on Dumbledore. Wide-eyed and trembling with awe. And utterly ignorant of politics and the power of his name. I can’t imagine Dumbledore sharing what power he has._

“He would have been essentially a Muggleborn. But a Muggleborn with someone else acting on his name, and Dumbledore making all the allies.”

“Oh.” Sirius barely exhaled the word. He stood frowning down at his hands, and then he looked back up and said, “I need to think. Don’t hold dinner for me.” He turned and strode towards the door down the corridor that would take him to an outside staircase Sirius had modified into a ramp.

Dolores looked at his back with raised eyebrows. She still thought something else had happened at the Wizengamot, but it was all too obvious that she wouldn’t be able to make Sirius talk about it. In the end, she shrugged and went to conduct Harry’s lesson in modern politics for the day.

*

The noise of the Floo opening was enough to shake Dolores out of a sound sleep. No Floo in the house should have been _able_ to open. She scooped her wand up from the bedside table and tapped it against a small mirror on a metal stand near the bed.

The mirror rippled, wavered, and became the image of the Floo entrance, locked on the fireplace. Dolores raised her eyebrows when no one came through. Were they trying to spy? Of course, they shouldn’t have been able to do even that, with all the entrances into the house locked tight.

Then a hoarse voice spoke from the flames. “Dolores Umbridge?”

Dolores was on her feet and moving immediately, pausing only to fling a casual robe over her shoulders. She went down the stairs fast, listening intently. No, Harry was asleep, and Sirius hadn’t come back, and Remus was snoring behind his door. Dolores took the opportunity to cast a Sleeping Charm on him. It might not be disastrous if Harry interfered, but the others could be a problem.

When she reached the fireplace, the green glow of the flames had dimmed to a small emerald spark swimming in the normal colors. Dolores sat down on a cushion in front of the hearth. “Professor Snape?”

The flames snapped upright again, and the green dot turned to an image of the professor’s face. He inclined his head, eyes locked on her. “Yes. Madam Umbridge, I have learned something I think you should hear.”

Dolores nodded, unsurprised. “What is your price?”

“Enough founding Galleons to start a business outside Hogwarts. I know the Potter fortune can provide that easily enough. And your hold on Black’s and the werewolf’s leashes enough that they will not interfere with me.”

“What were—”

And then Dolores snapped her mouth shut and thought of all the times that she had seen Remus sick after the full moon and the times that Harry had come to her on the nights when it was shining and talked about having nightmares, and her mouth clamped shut.

Harry knew, and he had helped in distracting her.

“Madam Umbridge.”

Dolores looked up. She nodded. “That werewolf, of course. You have my word. I’ve already talked to Sirius about it. If I have to, I’ll curse him to keep his mouth shut around you.”

Snape’s head tilted back a little. “The only spells that will do that without taking the mouth away permanently are Dark.”

“I hardly think that you’re about to tattle on me.”

“No,” Snape conceded. “I will want to have a business near Diagon Alley, although not in the alley itself. I am aware that Black might challenge you for custody and win if you wanted to spend that much money on one of his enemies.”

Dolores didn’t see fit to tell him that Sirius had said she was the best guardian for Harry. The understanding she had with Sirius might be damaged beyond repair by now. “How large a shop?”

They dickered over dimensions for a time, and what exactly she would do to keep Sirius and Remus under control, until Snape nodded and said, “That should be enough for now. Dumbledore is planning to sacrifice me to the Board of Governors, and sack me. But before he does that, he will have to destroy documents that made it clear he hired me knowing I was a Legilimens. And he will have to _Obliviate_ me. I can bring you both the papers and the memories.”

“How sure are you that he plans to Memory Charm you? Wouldn’t the documentation be enough?”

“He is cautious,” said Snape, and a small smile ran like a slash across his lips. “I know and understand him well, and that is why I have survived as long as I have. He might think that, were it my word against his, few people would believe me.” Snape looked her in the eye. “But you are a viable contesting force against him now. If you joined with me and my memory was left intact…”

Dolores nodded in recognition of both the compliment and the wariness. “Very well. Then I can promise you what you have asked for. But you will need to bring the documents with you.”

Her blood was singing inside her as she watched Snape hold up a sheaf of papers. “I have them,” he said. “I brought them with me on the chance that you would accept the bargain. Dumbledore will probably have sensed their absence by now.”

“Do you have anything else that you need to gather up?”

“I have few enough personal effects.”

“Then come through,” Dolores said, and waved her wand to end the charm that prevented—that _should_ have prevented—anyone from coming through from Hogwarts. As she stepped out of the way and watched him stripping soot off his robes, she added, “How did you manage to force the Floo open in the first place?”

“A spell of my own creation.” Snape looked around the room in an evaluating sort of way. “I will share the knowledge with you if you include some Potions ingredients with the opening of the shop.”

“It should not be difficult.” Dolores reached out a hand, and Snape laid the papers in it. Looking through them, Dolores nodded. There was a contract that specifically mentioned Snape’s Legilimency skills, a letter from Dumbledore that explained what he wanted Snape to do as a spy on the Dark Lord—which involved the Mind Arts—and several notes that made a reference to “seeing what’s on his mind” about some political enemy of Dumbledore’s in the Ministry.

Dolores folded up the papers and let herself smile. She could feel the joy racing and leaping through her. She had finally pinned Dumbledore in a position he couldn’t escape from, and he couldn’t rely on public perception of him as a hero and Snape as a former Death Eater, either. She had _won_.

“You are pleased, then.”

“Yes.” Dolores considered Snape. “It might be as well for you to stay out of Sirius’s sight, at first. He has something else on his mind, and I’ll need time to reconcile him to your presence.”

Snape nodded. “I intended to return to my own home anyway.”

“Does Dumbledore know where it is?”

Snape grimaced, conceding the point. “There is enough room in this house not to inconvenience me?”

“There is.”

Dolores led him to a room on the third floor, near the owlery, that the house-elves dusted and polished, but with old-fashioned furniture no one used. Snape nodded, stepped inside, and shut the door behind himself.

Dolores stood contemplating the future for a moment, and the spells that she would use to lock up the documents in a vault where no one but she knew where they were. Or, no, perhaps she would ask the house-elves to keep an eye on them, and make sure they knew to answer to no one but her.

Then a door closed downstairs, and Dolores half-closed her eyes and turned to confront Sirius.

She wanted to know how long she had been letting a werewolf live in the same house as Harry.


	29. Her Stance

Dolores walked down the stairs to see Sirius climbing towards her. He grinned, but he wasn’t as oblivious as he liked to pretend, and that expression faded before he stopped on the step below her.

“What happened?”

“I want to know what precautions you took so that Lupin wouldn’t bite anyone when he was in his werewolf form.”

Sirius froze, his hands fluttering for a moment on the banisters as if he was looking for something to pick up and throw at her. Dolores only stood there, her arms folded and her wand resting in her hand. If Sirius tried to use a Memory Charm on her, then he was going to find out how prepared she was.

“It’s not—” Sirius licked the back of his teeth. “It’s different than you’re thinking,” he began, in a weak, bumbling voice that made the heat in Dolores’s chest flare terribly.

“So you took _no_ precautions. You let Harry into the secret but never told him what a werewolf running around the house at night could really mean for him.” Dolores heard her voice shaking. She didn’t care. Not when she could imagine all too clearly what would happen if Lupin had caught Harry. “I thought you—were different from that, Sirius.”

“ _No_!” Sirius practically barked, and lunged up to grip her arm. Dolores whipped to the side and trained her wand on him. Sirius stopped at once, with his hand in the air, but his voice was stronger than before. “No, Remus had Wolfsbane every month! And I was with him in my Animagus form!”

“Why is that supposed to reassure me.”

Sirius seemed to notice the lack of a question mark, and winced. “Look, can we go—I don’t know, downstairs or something? I don’t want Harry to come out and find us arguing here.”

Dolores nodded curtly. She would prefer to deal with Harry and what he had known in her own way. But she chose a room down the corridor from Lupin rather than below him. She would know the instant he came outside.

Sirius began pacing back and forth the minute she shut the door. “We didn’t really _want_ to keep it from you,” he said earnestly. “It’s just that I knew what kind of reputation you had in the Ministry.”

“What kind of reputation did I have?”

Sirius turned and pointed at her. “One that said you would react exactly the way you’re reacting now! You immediately think that Remus did something wrong! That he’s going to hurt people _just_ because he’s a werewolf! That’s not true. He’s lived here three years and he’s never hurt anyone.”

“Perhaps if you told me about it—”

“I know you wouldn’t have let Remus be Harry’s tutor or let him stay in the house.” Sirius was still glaring at her. “And Remus _wanted_ that relationship with Harry! He wanted to get to know James and Lily’s son.”

“I am so glad to know that Lupin’s wishes matter more to you than Harry’s _safety_. Since I understand that Lupin did not confine himself to his room during the nights of the full moon.”

Sirius flinched for a second, but then he lifted his head. “No. We know exactly when the moon will rise. We go outside, and I give him his Wolfsbane, and then he transforms and I transform with him. He doesn’t attack me, you know. I think it’s because he’s so familiar with me, and another animal is less tempting than a human anyway.”

“I would like you to think about what you just said.”

“But we go miles away from _everybody_! Remus can run around instead of staying in one room. That’s what he did before he got this job and he could afford the Wolfsbane. He tore himself up. You ought to see the scars he has, it’s awful.”

That answered an old question Dolores had had regarding some of Lupin’s scars, but she would not have paid this price for the revelation. Barely keeping from grinding her teeth, she asked, “And now that he can afford it?”

“Huh?”

“Why does he have to leave the room and run around now that he can afford the Wolfsbane?” Dolores twirled her wand between her fingers and stepped closer to Sirius with a smile, noticing that he was avoiding her eyes. “Let me see if I can answer, since you seem so reluctant. Nothing is preventing him from staying in that room, but you think it’s more fun to run around outside. And it was fun to keep the secret from me. And it was fun to bark like an idiot and dare a werewolf to chase you.”

Sirius muttered something.

“What?” Dolores cupped her hand around her ear with exaggerated motions. “I don’t think I heard _that_ justification.”

“I don’t bark like an idiot,” Sirius muttered, louder.

Dolores bared her teeth in a grin that she hoped would strike Sirius as more frightening than a werewolf’s. “So everything is fine, right, as long as no one finds out? There’s no chance that Lupin would forget his Wolfsbane. Or you might be seen by Muggles. Or that you might miscalculate the time of moonrise and he’d transform earlier. Or that Harry might be encouraged by your example to lie to me about _other_ things…”

By Sirius’s expression, Dolores knew that last had already happened. She nodded shortly. “Explain.”

“I just—I mean, I’ve been teaching him a few spells that you probably wouldn’t approve of,” Sirius muttered, rubbing his forehead and looking away from her. “Some of the spells that James and I used to play pranks at Hogwarts. And I’ve got him on the path to become an Animagus. Just the first steps, the ones that a child can do.”

“Do you know what the Wolfsbane potion originated as?”

Sirius blinked at her. “No. What are you talking about?”

Dolores pointed her wand at his feet. “It came about by accident. The researcher who first brewed it was _attempting_ to make a potion to heal students stuck halfway through their Animagus transformation. A common accident, one that can cripple someone for life, and one that you seem to have avoided by _pure luck_.” Her temper broke then. “He is _ten years old,_ Sirius Black!”

Sirius only shook his head, his eyes narrowed. “What does that have to do with it? Of course I wasn’t going to just teach _anybody_ this, but the pup is the son and godson of Marauders! Of course he’ll be naturally talented in Transfiguration!”

Dolores shuddered at the thought of what Harry’s life would have been like if Sirius had never chased Pettigrew, or if he’d been proven innocent earlier and able to go get Harry from the Dursleys. He probably would have killed Harry in some “fun” accident before he was eight. Or got him devoured by a werewolf.

“You are going to explain to Harry that you won’t be continuing his Animagus training until you can get help from someone who’s _actually_ a professor,” she said. “Minerva McGonagall would be acceptable, if you don’t think that she’s too much under Dumbledore’s thumb. Just like you are going to explain to Remus Lupin that I will be overseeing his consumption of Wolfsbane from now on. And he will spend the full moon nights in a locked cellar with a chain on the door.”

Sirius just stared at her. He didn’t say anything or smile, but there was a rebellious glint in his eyes that Dolores understood only too well.

Dolores took a step forwards, smiling. “You are going to do this, Sirius,” she purred. “And you are going to keep those promises.”

“Why _should_ I?”

“Because otherwise,” Dolores aid, tracing his jugular with her wand, “I am going straight to the Ministry in a few hours, when they open, and telling them about my horrific discovery of the werewolf living in my house who put the Boy-Who-Lived in danger.”

“You _can’t_!” Sirius gasped and then snapped, “No one would believe you anyway! Not when they really know Remus and how gentle he is, and not when he’s lived here for years without causing a problem—”

“Who are they going to believe when they start thinking about it?” Dolores gave him a faint smile. “The werewolf and the man who were both outcasts for years—one of them an actual former _prisoner_ —or the woman who’s always done her best to protect the Boy-Who-Lived?”

Sirius’s jaws clamped shut. His nostrils flared. He didn’t look happy with her, but Dolores didn’t need him to look happy with her. She just needed him to agree that his actions before this were idiotic.

“I’ll do it,” Sirius hissed between his teeth, like an enraged Erumpent. “But that doesn’t mean I’ll _ever_ forgive you! And neither will Harry! He _likes_ learning to be an Animagus. And he likes Remus. If you send him away—”

“I won’t send him away at all,” Dolores told him sweetly. “He can stay if _you_ follow the new rules. Otherwise, it’ll be the Ministry officials who come to take him away who’ll be the villains.”

Sirius stood as tall and straight as he could, but Dolores faced him down. She could feel the cold anger that burnt in her belly lending her strength. Sirius was manipulative and a decent political player when he wanted to be.

But he wasn’t Harry’s legal guardian. He still _did_ carry that shadow of suspicion from Azkaban with him. And while he would cause trouble if he went against her, it was nothing compared to the trouble she could cause Lupin.

“How are you going to deal with Harry?” Sirius finally asked. “He lied to you, too. And I don’t see you spitting threats at him about Azkaban and the Ministry.”

“Harry is ten years old,” Dolores said softly. “You are _thirty,_ Mr. Black. Imagine who I think deserves the harsher punishment.” She paused, watching him, and then unleashed the next spell in her arsenal when she saw how stubborn he still looked. “Imagine what Harry will feel when he finds out _another_ adult in his life valued having fun and having a ‘normal’ life more than they valued him.”

It didn’t take long for Sirius to get the comparison, thank Merlin, or Dolores would have truly been in despair. He lunged forwards, his mouth open as if he was going to bite her in human form. Dolores raised a Shield Charm, and he stopped.

“I am _nothing_ like those filthy Muggles,” he whispered.

“Really? What did you want most, Sirius? A life where you could be a responsible guardian to Harry and teach him the rules he should follow to keep himself safe and happy? Or a life where you could act exactly like the emotional teenager you are, and play pranks, and see Harry as the reincarnation of your best friend?”

Sirius swallowed and shut his eyes. “Don’t—don’t take us away from him.”

“I shan’t have to,” Dolores said, and she didn’t even try to make her voice cold anymore. Soft would do. “If you both do _exactly_ as you’re told.”

Sirius blinked and looked steadily at her. Then he nodded. “All right. But you have to let me tell him that his Animagus lessons are going to end.”

“You’re not in a position to impose conditions. I’ll be telling him _all_ of this in the morning. Including his punishment for lying and disobeying me.”

Sirius’s shoulders slumped then. “Don’t be upset with him,” he said wearily. “We just told him it was okay and he went along with us. He’s a kid, like you said.”

“Yes. Ten years old. Not old enough to be punished the way you deserve to be. Old enough to know better. He _is_ going to receive the brunt of my temper in the morning, Sirius. In the meantime, I suggest that you offer your explanations to the only person you have the right to address right now. Go wake Lupin—you may need to cancel the sleep charms on him first—and tell him about the new order in the household.”

Sirius slunk out of the room, still glaring over his shoulder as if he thought that would make her change her mind. Dolores only raised her eyebrows at him, and Sirius finally looked at his feet and left.

Dolores sighed and turned to face Harry’s room. She would go and see if he was awake. If he wasn’t, then she would leave this until the morning, and only make sure that she was the one who saw Harry first then.

*

He was awake. He sat on his bed with his hands clasped in his lap, and he lifted his head when she entered. His eyes were as bright as _Lumos_ Charms.

“I know that Lupin is a werewolf,” she told him, standing near the door. “I know that Sirius let him run around with the Wolfsbane potion, and that you lied to me on the nights of the full moon so I wouldn’t wake up and go looking for them, or notice any noise they made coming back in. And I know that Sirius was teaching you to become an Animagus.”

Harry only narrowed his eyes a little, as if squinting against light she couldn’t see.

“All of that stops. _Now_.”

“Remus can’t stop being a werewolf,” Harry pointed out, his voice as quiet as hers had been most of the time she was talking to Sirius.

“He is going to stop being a free one,” Dolores said. “He’ll continue to take Wolfsbane, but he’ll stay in his room. And did you listen to the rest of it, or were you only waiting for what you could contradict?”

A bright flush took over Harry’s face, and he bit his lip. Then he glanced away from her, and muttered, “Sirius was right.”

“I’m astonished to hear there is something he may have had the correct thoughts on. Tell me what it was.”

“You don’t like werewolves. You start looking for someone to blame the minute something goes wrong. You don’t want me to learn advanced _magic_ , because you don’t know it. You just want me to learn advanced _politics_ , because that’s what you’re good at, and this way you get to have me under control, because you’re still better at it than I am. You always want to be in control—”

There was more, a tumbling rant that Harry had probably been keeping sealed beneath his lips for some time. Dolores listened, now and then nodding, until she finally asked, “And is that all that Sirius said to you?”

Harry flushed up to his cheekbones and muttered, “Yes.”

“Good. Now, please, think back on the spells that I’ve taught you. Detection spells and defensive ones may be the great _majority_ , but are they the only ones?” Harry silently shook his head. “And what level are they at?”

Harry struggled for a minute. Then he muttered, “I couldn’t find some of them in the spellbooks you let me look at at all.”

Dolores nodded. “They’re the property of the Ministry, and not usually used outside it. But you need to know them, so you do. Does that suggest to you that I’m only keeping you safe on the political front?”

“No.”

Harry was sullen again, staring down at his hands as if he couldn’t believe that he had let her win the argument. Dolores studied him, and decided that she had better bring up something he should have thought of already.

“I am concerned with your _safety_ ,” she said. “You can call it other things, but I think of it as all of a piece. Your safety is why I took you from the horrid Muggles. Your safety is why I taught you to duel with words and take care of yourself on the political front. Your safety is why I was upset to learn _there was a werewolf living in my house._ ”

Harry jerked and looked at her. “But—I thought you would be upset because Remus is dirty and barely human.”

“Have I ever said such words to you?”

“Sirius said—”

“Sirius was not taking your safety into consideration, something I have already spoken to him about.” Dolores let her voice cool. _And Sirius is behind the times. I would never say something like that now._ “What I have is someone with a _disease_ , a _condition_ , that he could pass to you. And Sirius was romping around with him as if nothing mattered!”

“Well, I mean, Remus wouldn’t attack him when Sirius was in his Animagus form—”

“And that makes _you_ entirely safe, of course,” Dolores agreed with a little jab of sweetness in her voice that made Harry flinch. “ _You_ know exactly how to handle yourself around a werewolf. Were you ever outside with them?”

“Um. Sometimes.”

Dolores shook her head. “I did underestimate the depths of Sirius’s recklessness,” she muttered. When Harry gave her a blank look, she rolled her eyes. “Harry, you are _smarter than this._ If Sirius wanted to take chances with a werewolf, then that was up to him. He is one of the _shallowest_ adults of my acquaintance, but if he wanted to run that risk, he could. He had _no right_ to risk your life.”

“But on Wolfsbane, Remus is safe—”

“And of course, no one could mistake the timing of the moonrise. Or forget to take the Wolfsbane because they got distracted by something else. Or be playing around and have the transformation almost start before they handed him the potion—”

From Harry’s flinch, she knew the nature of the near-catastrophe that had happened. She knew there had to have been at least one. She closed her eyes and struggled for patience.

“Sirius—Sirius said it was okay because we got Remus the potion before the moon cleared the horizon.”

“And we all know exactly how far we should trust Sirius’s judgment now.”

“Miss Dolores? I’m sorry.”

Dolores sighed and opened her arms and her eyes. Harry raced across the room and snuggled against her, sighing.

“A guardian has to think of your safety,” Dolores whispered to him. “This _must_ stop, Harry. I told Sirius last night. I’ll tell Lupin when I see him this morning. If it happens again, I’ll have no hesitation in kicking Lupin out and exposing him as a dangerous werewolf who lacks the judgment he needs to be around children. That will be the end of him getting any job as a tutor or teacher. Do you _understand me_?”

“You—sound scared.”

 _And furious_. But that was another thing Harry didn’t need to know in exactly those words. “I was terrified.”

Harry pressed closer still. “I’m sorry.” There was a beat of silence. “Am I going to get punished for this?”

“Two days confined to the house,” Dolores said. “And some reading that I’ll want you to write an essay about.” She’d already picked out the books she wanted him to read, all on werewolves and the times that they had tripped up and passed the infection on to someone else.

“All right.”

There was a moment of silence when he just leaned on her, and then Sirius abruptly shouted, “ _Snivellus?_ What are _you_ doing here?”

Dolores rolled her eyes, patted Harry’s shoulder one time, and rose to deal with the next crisis.


	30. The Next Crisis

Dolores sighed as she slid into her chair and picked up her cup of tea. She’d had late nights twice in a row now—soothing the row between Snape and Sirius the first night, and then conducting a quiet interview with a hand-picked reporter about some of the things she wanted to release.

But, as she realized when she saw the headline splashed across the front page of the _Daily Prophet_ , she was about to be repaid for at least one of them.

_ALBUS DUMBLEDORE: REVERED HEADMASTER OR REPULSIVE HIRER?_

Dolores snorted. Not the best alliteration in the world, but about what she expected out of the _Daily Prophet_.

She scanned the article, and nodded. She’d given her own impression of Dumbledore having Snape read Harry’s mind, of course, and also confirmed that Dumbledore had known the man was a Legilimens and would make use of that Legilimency when he hired him. The article also contained some quotes from people who had been at Harry’s birthday party, as Dolores had suggested. Except for the Greengrasses, all of them had spoken on the condition of anonymity.

That didn’t matter. Dumbledore had a lot more to contend with now than either trying to pursue Snape or trying to get Harry under his thumb.

“You look satisfied. Who went down?”

Dolores eyed Harry mildly as he sat down in the chair across from her. She still had some reservations about the way he had listened to Sirius, but she didn’t see the need to hold back the good news. She extended the paper.

Harry read the headline with a blink, and then the full article. His face was blank as he folded the paper and put it in front of Sirius’s place. Dolores sipped her tea and watched him. His insights were more valuable when they weren’t influenced by something she’d said.

Harry took a deep breath and asked, apparently as neutrally as he could, “What happens now?”

“Dumbledore is confronted with a lot of bad press and a lot of questions,” Dolores said, and savored one of the chocolate-filled biscuits that the house-elves had put out with the plates. She allowed herself exactly one a day. “He may or may not be removed as Hogwarts Headmaster. He’s regained some power in the Wizengamot in the last few years. But he’s going to have to give up this delusion that he can concentrate on you and nothing else.”

“He _is_ delusional.”

Sirius had sulked in to breakfast late, as usual. Dolores gave him a nod and ignored the other two empty places. Lupin had avoided breakfast until after she’d left lately, which at least told Dolores she had not misjudged his guilt over what he and Sirius had “taught” Harry.

Snape would come down when he wanted to come down. The same elves who set five places because they insisted on it would keep the tea warm for him and fetch him whatever food he wanted when he finally showed up.

“Dumbledore is the one you’re talking about, I hope?” Dolores asked Sirius as she slid the platter of chocolate biscuits towards him. It was just as well to get them away from Harry, who had started to eye them over the lip of his porridge bowl.

Harry sighed mournfully and went back to his porridge. Dolores quirked her lip to him and turned to Sirius, who was nodding vigorously enough to make crumbs fly everywhere. At least he swallowed the biscuit he was chewing on before he tried to start talking.

“Of course! He’s made all these stupid moves, and he’s counted on his reputation to save him.”

Dolores nodded. That would make sense of something she’d been wondering: why Dumbledore had been so obvious. She would have moved more cautiously herself and tried to do more behind the scenes. But Dumbledore had become used to deference and people doing what he wanted for so long that it made sense that he couldn’t give that up right away. He still thought people would go along with his wishes because they’d done that for decades.

“Do we need to do anything about him at the Ministry or in the Wizengamot?” Harry asked abruptly.

Dolores looked at her. “Not right now. If we’re summoned to testify or something, it will be different, of course.”

Harry nodded. He had finished his porridge now, and he gave Dolores a glance out of the corner of his eye before he took a biscuit. She nodded. When he had broken it and eaten it, he said, “I’m going to be in the library.”

“All right,” Dolores said. She had canceled his lessons for the next few mornings while she determined if she could trust Lupin as a teacher again, but it was unusual that he didn’t want to spend it flying.

She thought of asking him, as he turned and marched away from the table, if something was wrong, but at that moment she heard the Floo flare, and she went to answer what turned out to be the first of many calls on her time and energy.

*

Dolores sighed and stretched kinks out of her back. She would have to invest in a cushioned kneeling pad for that Floo. She didn’t use it that often most of the time, so this hadn’t been an issue before.

She went into lunch, and wasn’t surprised when Snape was the only one who was there, eating a late breakfast. He gave her a harsh look and went right back to reading the article in the _Daily Prophet_. He had a smirk, at least, which meant he might not be overly disagreeable.

Lack of surprise became surprise when Harry didn’t turn up. Dolores frowned and asked Snape, “Have you seen Harry today?”

“The menace was in the library the last time I looked,” Snape replied, not bothering to glance up at all.

 _Still?_ It was unlike Harry to miss meals, even if he’d got caught up in a topic he loved. He still kept count of every piece of food he ate and acted, sometimes, as though she might take it away if he was late to the table.

Dolores ate only a few distracted bites of her roast before standing up and going in search of Harry. She could feel Snape staring at her back. She suspected his eyes were full of contempt. But unless he started another fight with Sirius, then she doubted she needed to worry about what he thought of her.

When she opened the door to the library, Harry jumped. He was sitting with an enormous book spread in front of him, one that Dolores knew they didn’t regularly study from.

She walked across the bright carpet of blues and reds that the house-elves had insisted the old Potters had wanted in this library—well, one couldn’t count on people like them having taste _everywhere_ —and sat down on the other side of the table from Harry. Harry promptly bowed his head. Dolores watched the back of his neck flush.

She checked on his book. It was a law book, she determined after a few moments of staring. A _huge_ one, so big that she didn’t think Harry could have lifted it off the table. Her eyes went back to Harry’s face.

“You’re missing lunch.”

Harry rubbed his eyes with the back of one hand, a childish gesture he didn’t make often. “I know. But—I wanted to check on the laws against what Dumbledore did.” He waved his hand at the book.

“You know I will handle this for you,” Dolores said. “Of course you’ll be involved, and you’ll know what’s going on. But I’ll tell you what laws Dumbledore broke, and what he’s trying to do, and what appearances you need to put in.”

Harry hesitated for a second. Then he said, “I know.”

Dolores waited. She had learned the value of silence from her years in the Ministry. Some people would ignore an underling and talk about sensitive gossip in front of her. Some people just didn’t close their doors, or at least not all the way. Some people assumed her polite pretense of not listening was the reality.

And some people could be manipulated by silence into blurting out a secret. Or three.

Harry looked at her, shivered a little, and then murmured, “I wanted you to know why I—went along with Sirius and Remus for so long.”

Dolores smiled a little. “And I’d like to hear it. But that doesn’t explain what shutting yourself up in the library has to do with it.”

“It was a habit,” Harry said, and looked out the one window in the library, framed between curving dark shelves, towards the garden that Sirius had turned mostly into a Quidditch pitch. “I was really young when they told me about Remus being a werewolf. And they also told me why I couldn’t tell you.”

Dolores’s lips twitched in spite of herself when Harry referred to being “really young” three years ago. But she held her silence and listened.

“It was fun. A secret.” Harry traced a swirl on the table that seemed to be formed entirely of thought in his own head. “And I wanted to know something you didn’t know.”

“Why, Harry?”

Harry looked up at her, his eyes direct and much too old. “I kept secret from the Dursleys all the time. Back then, I thought you might be the same. I wanted to have at least one secret from you.”

Dolores reached out and squeezed his hand, saying nothing. Harry swallowed and went on. “And then years went by. And I realized that werewolves were more dangerous than I thought they were, but I still didn’t think Remus deserved to be kicked out to starve. He _was_ starving, you know, before you let him live here,” he added, with a sudden defensiveness that made his hand tremble in Dolores’s. “He didn’t have a job. I couldn’t let him face that.”

Dolores let her nostrils flare. It didn’t matter, since Harry wasn’t looking at her. So Sirius and Lupin had played on Harry’s compassion, the same driving force that made him want to rescue Muggleborns from abusive homes.

For that, she despised them more than their lie to her.

But she had to soothe Harry now. That was more important than all the small-brained plans Sirius and Remus could come up with during their lives. She smiled and asked, “Do you know why I let him stay here? When he’d lied to me and made you keep secrets from me?”

Harry looked at her, his eyes huge and shrewd and bright and wary. He shook his head silently.

“Because I think that Sirius would be upset if he was kicked out,” Dolores said. “And so would Lupin. He might go running to Dumbledore—”

“He wouldn’t do that!”

Dolores waited for the echoes of Harry’s voice to die, and said gently, “I disagree. But truly, Harry, he might do it the same way that I think he decided to keep this secret from me: a moment of panic he regrets later.” She’d already had the conversation with Lupin where he explained about how he’d panicked at the thought of losing his job. Avoiding her eyes the whole time, of course. “But by then, the damage would be done.”

Harry pulled his hand back from hers and trained his eyes on the book. “You think that it’s the same sort of thing he did here.”

Dolores nodded. “He would regret it. Sirius would, too, but Sirius would do it out of spite and outrage, not panic.” Harry gave her a faint smile that heartened her to see. “So. I can understand why you kept the secret—”

“But you’re not letting Remus stay out of the kindness of your heart.”

“Exactly.”

“Why did you tell me that, though?” Harry leaned back in his chair and stared at her pensively. “You could have got away with telling me that you’d changed your mind about werewolves, and that would make you sound better.”

Dolores laughed quietly. “Would you have believed me? Or do you think Sirius or Lupin would have?”

“No.”

“Correct. That’s not at all effective as a tactic.”

Harry stared at her. “So you believe all werewolves should be cast out of the wizarding world and have no jobs?”

Dolores shook her head. “Most of the time, I don’t care about them. But they _do_ have a disease, and they could give someone else their disease if they aren’t careful. I find it objectionable that Lupin did not take the proper precautions.”

“But you might have thrown him out before you knew him. You know, if he’d told you about being a werewolf before you changed your mind.”

“What makes you think I have changed my mind?”

Harry hesitated for one moment, then visibly squared his shoulders and jumped in. “Sirius found some of the memos that you wrote when you were working in the Ministry. He said that you were in favor of pretty harsh restrictions on werewolves.” He looked her straight in the eye. “And he said that he only went looking for them because he wanted to know what kind of person you were.”

Dolores controlled her anger. In truth, her anger would avail her little here, except perhaps to turn Harry against her in ways she didn’t want. “I have changed.”

“He didn’t know that yet.”

“He should have cared more about your safety than about his friend’s.”

Harry paused. Then his hand drummed an odd pattern on the law book. “Because he’s my godfather? Or because he’d been in prison for six years?”

“Neither of those have much to do with it. Because he is the adult, and Lupin is an adult who should have been able to take care of himself, and because you are a _child_ who could have been in danger from the disease.”

“Oh,” Harry breathed.

“Yes.” Dolores sighed and continued, “I wouldn’t want any other werewolf to move in with us. I’m not going to start campaigning for their rights. I’m not going to put money towards those cures for lycanthropy that sometimes pop up. They’re _always_ scams.”

Harry watched her.

“But I’m not going to campaign _against_ them, either. I want to make sure that werewolves who live around us have their Wolfsbane, because it makes them less dangerous. And I’m not going to kick Lupin out.”

Harry nodded. There was an odd little smile on his lips.

“What is it?” Dolores asked, because she couldn’t actually think of a reason for him to look like that.

“Just that sometimes you make decisions because they benefit you and sometimes you make them for other reasons.” Harry stood up and came around the table to touch her cheek. “And sometimes I can’t tell the difference.” Then he turned around and went to the dining room.

Dolores remained sitting where she was. She didn’t worry for Harry in Snape’s company. He could handle himself more than well enough. But she did sit pondering in wonder.

_He doesn’t see the reasons? But I trained him to see the reasons. Would he see mixed motives in others, and feel sympathy for them, when in reality they only have the motive to make his life difficult?_

Before Dolores could wonder further on that, she heard the tap of owl talons. Sirius must have opened the window for the bird, because a second later, he yelled, “It’s for you, Umbridge!” It sounded as if his voice was coming from the largest sitting room.

Dolores didn’t hurry. By the time she made it, Sirius thrust the letter, which had an official Ministry seal on it, at her and turned away so his hair masked his face. Lupin, playing the other side of their game of chess, ducked his head.

Dolores ignored their antics, more interested in the owl, which was waiting for a response instead of flying away the minute the message was delivered, as was par for the course with Ministry owls. She looked at it and offered her arm. The owl hopped up to her shoulder, and Dolores started to walk out of the room.

“Are you going to kick me out?”

Dolores blinked and turned around. Lupin had initiated a conversation for the first time in two days. He still sat with his head hunched and his shoulders higher than his chin, but he’d done it. Silently, Dolores acknowledged that she’d started to think he was incapable of it.

“No.”

He was still gaping at her when she left. Dolores opened the letter as soon as she was private, and smiled a little as she read it.

_Dolores Umbridge, your presence is required at an inquiry to be convened into the doings of Albus Dumbledore and his treatment of Harry Potter in the largest Wizengamot courtroom at 9 AM on Wednesday._

Dolores nodded to the owl and set about writing back.

She was ready.


	31. The Inquiry

“Thank you for coming, Madam Umbridge.”

Dolores gave the man shaking her hand a bland smile. He was Heracles Shacklebolt, and she knew very well that he was loyal to Dumbledore. Or at least his nephew Kingsley was, and it was wise to assume family connections in their world until someone told you otherwise. “You’re welcome. I hope to see justice done.”

For a minute, Heracles leaned towards her, and his grip crushed her hand. He was an old wizard who had shrunken with age, but his voice could still project threats when he wanted it to. “You’re trying to bring down a great man. Why would you _do_ that?”

“Perhaps you should ask Dumbledore why he would try to read a little boy’s mind and gain control of him at all costs,” said Ernest Bolton, coming up behind her.

Heracles looked at Ernest and released her hand. “He didn’t do that.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t make such statements until you view the witness memories,” Dolores suggested mildly. A glance around the milling courtroom had told her that the Greengrasses were here, and so was Snape, although he’d left the house separately so as not to be seen walking in with her. “I’ve heard good witnesses can change someone’s position dramatically.”

“There’s nothing that can convince me to believe ill of Albus Dumbledore.”

“A hardened mind, impossible to change. What a waste.” Ernest shook his head and began to climb the stairs to the galleries.

Heracles stood and glared at Dolores. His dark skin seemed a little paler than usual. “What did you promise Ernest, to get him on your side?”

“Surely you should have seen that we’ve worked together for the last few years.”

“Someone shouldn’t be able to change—”

But not even one of Dumbledore’s loyalists was capable of ignoring that hypocrisy in his own statement. He clamped his lips tighter and turned away, heading up to his own seat on the opposite side of the room.

“Hello, Dolores. How is Harry holding up?” The Greengrasses had come up to her, and Alfred Greengrass smiled slightly at her. Daphne was beside him, her eyes wide as she took in the Wizengamot members rustling their robes and sitting down. Dolores assumed it was probably her first time here.

“Hello, Alfred. He’s doing well. He’ll be here, of course, but a little later. I saw no reason to expose him to more gaping and camera flashes than necessary.”

“The trials one must go through when you have a famous child.”

Dolores knew well enough that he would have liked to exchange his daughters’ quiet reputations as children of good family for Harry’s fame, so she merely smiled politely and gave a deeper nod, a half-bow, to Madam Greengrass, Alfred’s grandmother, standing behind him. She was also a member of the Wizengamot and had opposed Dumbledore on Harry’s behalf before. “Hello, Madam.”

The woman snorted and cast a spell that floated her up towards her seat. “You needn’t try that charming bollocks on _me_ , Dolores Umbridge,” she said over her shoulder.

“She does like that her great-granddaughter is friends with Harry Potter,” Alfred murmured, avoiding Dolores’s eyes.

“I know she does,” Dolores said. She nodded to the Greengrasses and moved to take her seat in the row of chairs that faced the gallery. In truth, she didn’t fear much that Dumbledore would be able to escape this inquiry or make her look bad. There were simply too many people prepared to testify against him.

And the Wizengamot had bent its rules for Dumbledore in the past, but unless they were willing to change several _laws_ , they would not be able to excuse him this time.

Dolores folded her hands and glanced around with casual interest. There were more members of the Wizengamot attending than she had seen in many months. A few reporters lurked along the walls as well, and Dolores nodded and smiled to the few who had helped her and Harry in the past. Then she looked up as Dumbledore walked into the room, clad in a set of robes bright enough to sear through someone’s closed eyelids.

He saw her and beamed at her. Dolores turned her head a little to the side and smiled, distantly. Dumbledore was a Legilimens himself, after all. She didn’t want her thoughts read before the inquiry started.

“We’ve all had so many misunderstandings,” Dumbledore said, and came over to stand directly beside her, which was more than Dolores had expected. His voice was soft and soothing. “Don’t you think we could put aside our disagreement, so that we might give Harry the best life possible?”

“The best life possible is one on the other side of the room from you, sir,” Dolores said. Her voice was cool. She kept her eyes on the far wall. Given what had brought them here, she doubted anyone was going to find fault with her manners.

“But Harry is more important than anything we do here today.”

“I might get to say that,” Dolores said, and didn’t glance up at Dumbledore, but turned her body a little, to take him in without giving him access. “I took up the duties of his guardian, and I consider myself privileged to have the position. But what have you done that makes Harry important to you?”

“He is—”

“Someone you dropped off with abusive Muggles, and you did it by leaving him on a doorstep in autumn,” Dolores says. “No, sir, I don’t think Harry is important to you in the way you seem to be claiming.”

Dumbledore’s face turned the slightest bit pink. But he bent towards her and tried to use his gentle, condescending tone to best effect. “If you consider that he’s the Boy-Who-Lived, then he’s important to every wizard in Britain.”

“Then talk to me about him on that basis,” said Dolores, and glanced up more than she had so far. “He’s no more important to you than he is to every other wizard.”

“My dear woman, when you remember that I am the Headmaster of the school where Harry will spend seven years of his life—”

“That’s what we’re here to determine, Dumbledore,” called Madam Greengrass from up in the gallery. “Why don’t you take a seat so that we can get _started_ already?”

Dumbledore turned pinker than before, probably because everyone was staring at them. Dolores rearranged her hands in her lap and nodded grandly to Dumbledore. “When you can, talk to me outside this hearing.”

Dumbledore watched her for a moment more, then turned and went to take a chair at the far end of the row. Dolores saw a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye; it was Sirius escorting Harry in. She smiled at them both—well, mostly at Harry, but Sirius was welcome to think that it was for him if he wanted to—and faced front again.

“We are here to conduct an inquiry into the activities of Albus Dumbledore, specifically considering his handling of Harry Potter and his guardian, Dolores Umbridge.” Minister Bagnold began the meeting with a rolling voice. “I understand that one of the charges concerns Headmaster Dumbledore’s attempt to have Severus Snape read the mind of Harry Potter during a birthday party gathering at Madam Umbridge’s house. Will the witnesses for this part of the inquiry please come forwards?” From her bland voice, one would never know she had been at that party herself.

Dolores stood up, along with Sirius, Harry, and Alfred Greengrass and Daphne. And, from the different part of the audience where he’d secreted himself, Snape.

Dolores couldn’t help herself. She turned her head a little to look at Dumbledore. His expression was as priceless as she’d always thought it would be when his eyes latched onto Snape. Then he shook his shoulders and sat forwards as if he was going to ride a plunging Abraxan through the clouds and down to earth.

 _You can be determined all you like,_ Dolores thought, and walked out of the row of chairs to meet up with the others. _It’s hard to argue against evidence._

“You are Severus Snape?” Minister Bagnold asked, looking down on Snape with a remote expression as if she didn’t know perfectly well who he was. “Potions master at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry?”

“I am.” Snape looked calm. Dolores had wondered if he would manage to keep his spite on a leash, but he’d succeeded better, at least with his facial expression, than she’d imagined.

“And you have worked for the school for ten years?”

“Almost ten, yes.”

“Albus Dumbledore hired you?”

“He did.” Snape was looking now as if he was about to enjoy himself. Dolores eyed him. _Just as long as he remembers that he has to keep his tongue under control, then I don’t mind what else he does._

“I understand,” said Minister Bagnold, magnificent in her condescension, “that part of the inquiry concerns whether Headmaster Albus Dumbledore knew you were a Legilimens when he hired you, and whether he intended for you to confine use of your gift to adults if he did know.”

“It does.” Snape reached into his robe pocket and produced a sheaf of parchments as though he was a Muggle magician conjuring a rabbit. “This is the contract that shows his awareness and what he intended to have me do to students.”

The roar that swept the courtroom seemed to come mostly from the people on the floor, but Dolores saw more than one Wizengamot member standing up in their seats and shouting fiercely. She smiled and stood there, looking around, as if she’d had no idea that this would happen. Ernest Bolton’s eyes _were_ narrowed at her, but Dolores only shrugged. This worked out for their side, so he didn’t need to know every detail in advance.

“Those papers could be tampered with!” Heracles Shacklebolt was arguing, waving his hands around. “We won’t know—”

“ _I_ know there are potions that would reveal any tampering with the original parchment and ink,” Snape said, curling his lip as if he was smelling manure. “Why not bring them out and use them on the contract? I assume that the Ministry keeps such potions on hand.” His opinion of them if they didn’t was left implied.

“Of course we do,” said Minister Bagnold, with a frown at Heracles when he tried to open his mouth. She turned and nodded to a woman in the robes of an Auror behind her, and the Auror slipped away while Bagnold turned to Heracles. “If you will calm down, _please,_ Mr. Shacklebolt.”

Heracles did, but he was still scowling at Snape. Snape gave him the blandest look imaginable in return.

Dolores finally couldn’t control herself, and turned around to look at Dumbledore.

Dumbledore stood there with his hands folded and a smile on his face. Dolores wondered if she was the only one who could make out the sharp brittleness of the lines carved around his mouth.

“While we are waiting for the potion to be delivered,” said Minister Bagnold, “perhaps you could tell us about what occurred at your ward’s birthday party, Madam Umbridge?”

Dolores nodded and stepped forwards. “Headmaster Dumbledore and Professor Severus Snape unexpectedly arrived at Harry’s birthday party,” she said. “I hadn’t realized they intended to be anywhere near him before Harry arrives at the age to go to Hogwarts. Because of interactions between Headmaster Dumbledore and my ward in the past, I felt compelled to be present when they met. I was therefore close enough to hear Professor Snape murmur ‘ _Legilimens._ ’”

“Why would anyone want to read the thoughts of a _child_?” Heracles tried to interrupt.

“I know, it is a terrible crime,” Dolores agreed, laughing inwardly when she saw how his face flushed. She thought he’d been trying to set up a line of reasoning about a child’s thoughts being boring, but it wasn’t going to succeed. “I was angry at Professor Snape first of all, of course. But Professor Snape revealed that he had either been meant to go unnoticed and find information in Harry’s mind that would allow the Headmaster to influence him or take the fall if he was noticed—”

“You cannot _prove_ that!”

“Well, I can certainly offer up my Pensieve memories,” Dolores said mildly. “And so can Professor Snape. I imagine that he can remember the moment when Headmaster Dumbledore told him that he would like to read Harry’s thoughts.”

“Yes, I can,” Snape said, perfectly on cue.

“I, for one, would like the thoughts of the child whose mind was supposedly violated,” Heracles said loudly. “Let’s ask _him_ what it felt like.”

Sirius had led Harry up to the front already. Harry turned his gaze from face to face, his expression blank except for a little sadness in his eyes. Dolores would have hugged him if they had been alone. Or at least patted his shoulder. It wouldn’t do to have the boy getting ideas.

“What did it feel like, when Snape supposedly made this probe into your mind?” Heracles demanded, his smile faltering when Harry only went looking at him. “Can you even _describe_ what it felt like?”

“It felt like someone trying to dig up the most precious secret I had,” Harry said simply. “And like I knew they would laugh at it and publish it in all the papers. It was disgusting and horrible, and I saw several memories flash before my eyes.”

There was silence for a bit, and then another Wizengamot member said, “That is what it’s like when someone’s thrashing around in your mind with Legilimency, I have to say. An accurate description.”

That made a few other people start to argue, but Dumbledore spoke up then, and made his voice golden and sweeping, the way Dolores thought he must have when he gave speeches in the Wizengamot in the past. “If I might respond? What Madam Umbridge says is inaccurate. She does not understand the inner workings of Hogwarts as—well as she thinks.” He smiled, and it was reassuring and noble and all the other positive adjectives someone could apply to a political leader. “And while Severus may have done that, it certainly was _not_ at my order. I had already intended to sack him for using Legilimency on the students.”

Snape laughed. Dumbledore frowned at him.

 _What, did you expect him to go quietly to his doom like a good little sacrificial lamb?_ Dolores thought, shaking her head. _Neither him nor Harry. You aren’t as good a planner as I thought if your plans always involved people offering themselves up in your place._

“We can settle with Pensieve memories and Veritaserum,” said Minister Bagnold, at the same moment as the Auror she’d sent out earlier returned with a flask of bubbling brown potion. “Ah. Now we can test the contract Professor Snape says is his.” She gestured and Summoned the parchments Snape had been holding.

Dolores suffered a brief flash of discomfort as Bagnold tore a corner of the parchment and snipped loose a piece of one large letter to get a sample of the ink. If Snape had lied and this wasn’t his original contract after all…

But the potion abruptly calmed and turned clear. Bagnold nodded to a man who had followed the Auror, and he said, in the precise words of someone who cared more about the details of potions than politics, “That indicates that the contract is the stated age.”

“Well, then.” Bagnold put the parchments down next to her chair and turned to Dumbledore. “Perhaps you could indicate, Headmaster, why you chose to hire someone who you knew had Legilimency, and also make it a condition of his employment that he use it at your discretion?” Her voice was soft, but Dolores could hear the shake in it. Bagnold was much angrier than she was letting on.

“As I said, I intended to sack Professor Snape for using Legilimency on students—”

“But you already had committed an illegal act by hiring someone who did, and saying in his contract—”

“I changed my mind over the years.” Dumbledore looked tragic as he lifted his hands. “Can a man not do that? Or must the crimes of my younger self ruin my reputation even as I attempt to cleanse it?”

Some members of the Wizengamot nodded fervently, but Minister Bagnold simply turned to Snape and said, “Would you be willing to undergo Veritaserum to substantiate Madam Umbridge’s charge that the Headmaster ordered you to use Legilimency on Harry Potter?”

“Yes,” said Snape, after a long moment in which he examined the man standing behind the Minister. He must be someone who Snape trusted to brew good potions, because when he took out a vial of Veritaserum with a small bow and walked towards him down the stairs, Snape reached for it without hesitating further.

“Now, this seems a _little_ hasty—” Dumbledore began.

Snape had already taken the potion and placed three precise drops on his tongue. He swayed, but stayed on his feet, and Minister Bagnold asked, “Is your name Severus Snape?”

“Yes.”

“Do you work at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry?”

“Yes.”

The Minister started to open her mouth again, but Dumbledore cut in quickly before she could. “Were you an unrepentant Death Eater until 1981?”

“Yes,” Snape said, after a visible moment of sweating and struggling.

Once again people leaped to their feet and roared. Heracles was pointing a finger and asking, “How can you trust someone who was a Death Eater?” Sirius moved closer to Harry as if to shield him. Harry was looking around with cold eyes, but he caught her gaze and slipped his blank mask back on.

“Did Dumbledore know you were a Death Eater when he hired you?” asked the Minister.

“Yes.” Snape’s eyes had filled with viciousness that Dolores felt pleased about. Honestly, Dumbledore should have known better than to stir him up.

“Then why did he hire you?” the Minister asked, in between more shouts and finger-pointing and accusations.

“Because he felt I had sincerely repented for my actions during the war,” Snape said. “And because I promised to be his spy in the Death Eater ranks if the Dark Lord should ever return.”

“It seems more and more obvious to me,” Dolores said, in one of those pauses that happened when everyone else had fallen silent in shock, “that Headmaster Dumbledore has run the school more for his own political purposes than as an educational institution.”

“That seems to me true.” Minister Bagnold’s smile was strained. “Now, please give us your version of events at Harry Potter’s birthday party.”

Dolores didn’t listen to Snape’s exact words. Of course she knew what he would say, and she was more interested in keeping an eye on Dumbledore. His face was bloodless, but he was still trying to smile. Perhaps he thought he had too much political power to fall even now.

The Minister motioned for the Potions brewer to give Snape the antidote to the Veritaserum when he was done reciting his memories, and she turned to Dolores. “I would like your memories for our Pensieve, Madam Umbridge. The memories of the party, that is. And those of anyone else who is willing to give them.”

Alfred and Sirius were already stepping forwards. Dolores touched her wand to her temple as she saw an Auror coming down the steps from the gallery with the Pensieve, but her eyes were on Dumbledore’s stunned, angry face.

The inquiry hadn’t concluded yet. They might end up recommending that Dumbledore have some kind of sanctions imposed rather than leave his post, Dolores knew.

But his attempts to manipulate the evidence were also now on record. He was not going to survive as he had been.

 _It feels good to change the world,_ Dolores thought cheerfully, and put her memory in the Pensieve as it hovered in front of her.


	32. Restrictions

“We have made our decision.”

Dolores’s spine felt stiff with sitting up so straight, but she only nodded in response to the Wizengamot speaker. This wasn’t Madam Greengrass, but another woman who looked old enough to be her contemporary. She had white hair that was braided around the crown of her head and then hung down in the back, and a pursed expression. She also had her arms folded and a scowl on her face aimed at Dumbledore.

Dumbledore, of course, didn’t look affected by that at all. He smiled blandly at the old woman, who narrowed her eyes.

“I’m glad you have,” Dumbledore said in the rich, rolling voice that was probably a strong indicator of how he had managed to hang onto his political power for so long. “The children of Britain deserve an answer as to what will become of their education.”

The older woman only sniffed at him, and then turned back to Dolores and Alfred and Snape, as if she assumed they would make more sense. “We agree that Albus Dumbledore cannot be allowed to remain Headmaster with unlimited power. Therefore, we have placed restrictions and sanctions on him that will limit his power. If he does not comply with them in the next year, then he will be stripped of his post.”

Dolores nodded slowly. She hadn’t been foolish enough to hope for a _complete_ victory over Dumbledore. And anyway, at least that meant he would either be changed or gone by the time Harry attended Hogwarts.

The woman opened a scroll to begin reading from it. “First, Albus Dumbledore is forbidden from seeing and approving applications for professors by himself. The Board of Governors will aid him, and they will make _sure_ that no candidate with Legilimency or carrying the Dark Mark on his arm is approved again.” The woman stared at Snape.

Snape gave no twitch. The Wizengamot member rolled her eyes and went on. “Second, the Board of Governors will visit with Headmaster Dumbledore every month and use a diluted form of Veritaserum on him. It won’t compel him to answer every question asked of him, but it will ensure that he answers a round of common questions completely.”

“This violates my rights as a human being,” said Dumbledore. His tone was almost casual. Dolores glanced at him from the corner of her eye. _He doesn’t believe this is really happening. He doesn’t believe they can really enforce it._

“No more than you violated Mr. Potter’s rights by having your minion read his mind,” Madam Greengrass growled, stomping the floor with a carved ivory cane that Dolores thought she hadn’t had when she went up to her seat.

“All parts of this list of restrictions are non-negotiable,” said the woman who had been reading them so far, with a slight nod of her head. “Unless, of course, you wish to surrender your power right now, Headmaster Dumbledore, and allow us to choose another professor of Hogwarts to fill your position. That would save us all some trouble.”

Dumbledore tightened his lips. Dolores thought she might have heard his teeth grinding if she’d been standing closer. “No. No, I _quite_ see your point.”

“Very well.” The woman returned to reading. “Third, Headmaster Dumbledore will agree never to use his own Legilimency on students for the next year. Any violation will come out when he is dosed with Veritaserum. That will be one of the regular questions asked.”

“How am I know when one of my students is about to do something dangerous?”

“How did previous Headmasters without mental magic cope, other than by having portraits and ghosts who reported to them? Ask the previous Headmasters you have unparalleled access to for clues!”

Dolores had to fight to keep her face grave at Madam Greengrass’s words. She glanced sideways and saw the way Harry was smiling at her. But he was a child, and would be forgiven that breach of protocol in a way that she would not. She clamped her teeth down on her lip, and stared straight ahead.

“Fourth, Headmaster Dumbledore will agree to tell the Board of Governors about any other professors he hired for political reasons only. They will review the records of the professor’s success in teaching their subject and decide whether those hires should stay on.”

“That may not be possible. I might not remember all of them, or the reasons for which I hired them.”

“That is why there is also a provision that Headmaster Dumbledore will show the Board of Governors the original contracts that he signed with _all_ professors he hired. Where necessary, potions to test the age of the parchment and ink will be provided.”

Dolores studied the ceiling this time so that she wouldn’t smile.

“Fifth, Headmaster Dumbledore will agree to cease any contact with Harry Potter that is not strictly related to his attendance at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry when he is eleven. All such contact must come through letters addressed to his guardian, Dolores Umbridge.”

 _That rather neatly closes the loophole that he might try to communicate with Sirius or Lupin,_ Dolores thought. She thought Sirius would probably burn Dumbledore’s letters rather than read them, but Lupin was a weak link.

“Sixth, when Harry Potter attends Hogwarts—assuming that these sanctions have worked and Headmaster Dumbledore is still in the _appropriate_ role for him to play when it comes to one of his students—there will be no unsupervised meetings between the Headmaster and Harry Potter. At least three other adults must be present, and one of them must be either Dolores Umbridge or her chosen representative.”

“That will make it _impossible_ to have normal meetings—”

“Most of the time, Headmaster Dumbledore, why would you need to meet with a student?” The old woman peered down at him. “Only for disciplinary measures, and I have to admit, we had problems with the idea that you could be unbiased in your treatment of Mr. Potter when you have done so much to him already. So the unbiased observers are a good idea, for you as well as for him.”

Dumbledore clamped his jaws shut, and his nostrils flared like an angry camel’s. Dolores knew what he wouldn’t say. He wanted to speak to Harry for _political_ reasons, for the same reason he had wanted to leave him to the Dursleys and then gain custody of him.

Dolores didn’t know if she knew all those political reasons right now. But she _would_ find out.

“Seventh, Headmaster Dumbledore will make copies of all documents detailing his dealings with professors, including contracts for non-political hires and messages to the ones who were part of his Order of the Phoenix, available to the Board of Governors—”

“That would violate their privacy!”

“The contracts are, or should be, a matter of public record,” the Wizengamot witch said, and rattled the parchment she held with a shake of her hands. “Headmaster Dippet used to send them to us as well as to the Board of Governors for revising. That you don’t is a pity, but we’re only resuming an old tradition, not creating an entirely new one. And the messages to your Order of the Phoenix members fall under the same conditions as you disclosing those professors you hired for purely political reasons.”

“May I remind you that, during the last war, the Order of the Phoenix was the only effective resistance to Voldemort?”

The witch gasped sharply, but kept her calm other than that. “Perhaps we would have managed a more effective resistance if you had _shared_ the information you held, Headmaster, instead of keeping it secret.”

Dumbledore did grind his teeth, audibly, this time. Dolores caught the smile Harry sent her, and nodded, the safest thing she could do right now.

“In the _meantime_ ,” the Wizengamot woman said, and folded the scroll she held up with a snap, “we will try these sanctions for a year. If you obey them acceptably, Headmaster Dumbledore, then we will relax the ones about the revising of past documentation and we will cease the questioning under Veritaserum. All others will remain in effect. It is _disgraceful_ that you have ever used Legilimency on students, Dumbledore.”

Dumbledore would have opened his mouth to protest again; in fact, Dolores was absolutely sure he would. But he only turned pink, and, after flushing and straining while his throat bobbed like a frog’s, he managed to stay silent.

“Is there anything that you wish to add to this list of punishments, Madam Umbridge?”

Dolores turned back to the woman and shook her head. “These sanctions are just and fair.” She paused. “But might I know your name? I don’t, and it would be awkward to simply refer in interviews to ‘the sanest member of the Wizengamot.’”

The woman smiled a little. “I am Janet Ilchester. You may refer to me as such.” She turned and gestured with the scroll towards Dumbledore. “Perhaps _think_ before you do something as political and interfering as this, Headmaster. Leave politics to the Wizengamot.”

Dumbledore nodded, deeply enough that someone could mistake it for a bow if they didn’t know him as well as Dolores was beginning to. “I understand now. Thank you for outlining the boundaries of acceptable behavior, Madam Ilchester.”

Dolores narrowed her eyes as he turned away. That sounded like an acknowledgement of the Wizengamot’s power to punish him, but she was sure that it had other things going on under the surface, and Dumbledore would _still_ find a way to evade what he was supposed to do.

The thing was, she couldn’t worry that much about it. Harry was free from the man’s influence for at least a year. And the Veritaserum interrogations and the supervised meetings and the fact that all letters had to come through her meant that Harry would be protected as far as possible.

 _As far as possible without wrapping him up in blankets in a darkened room. And I would be no better than his relatives if I did that._ Then Dolores paused and considered. _Well, all right, they probably wouldn’t have allowed him the blankets._

“We need to talk about you keeping your promise to purchase me the space for a shop.”

Dolores nodded to Snape. “We will. For now, though, I need to talk to Sirius and Harry.” She turned and walked over to them for the first time since they’d entered the courtroom.

“That was _wonderful_.” Sirius’s cheeks were flushed, and Dolores thought he might have grabbed her and hugged her if things weren’t so strained between them right now. As it was, he did pat her shoulder. “I never thought that a legal punishment could be so _satisfying_.”

Dolores smiled. “You would have preferred pranks?”

“They’re more satisfying. Generally.”

“In this case, we had all the proof we needed. Pranks might be more satisfying when you can’t demonstrate wrongdoing. But we could.” She looked down and saw Harry’s small face tilted back to meet her own, his green eyes intense. “Are you satisfied, Harry? Do you fell well-protected?”

Harry turned the thought carefully over in his mind. Sirius stopped almost-cheering when he did that and looked at him in concern. Dolores shot him a glance when he opened his mouth to speak. No. They were going to let Harry handle this on his own.

Sirius huffed out loud and crossed his arms. Harry still didn’t turn to glance at him, though. His eyes had never left Dolores’s face.

“Yes,” Harry said finally. “I know that he might find a way past some of the restrictions that I can’t see right now. But you taught me that I can’t live in fear of what my enemies might do. I can only take _reasonable_ precautions and try to be ready for them when they break free.”

Dolores nodded and said, “Then we will go back home, and try to explain what happened today in a way that Lupin will understand.”

“Remus doesn’t sympathize with Dumbledore as much as you think he does,” Sirius said under his breath as Harry led them towards the entrance. “I know he said something about Dumbledore the other day, but that was only because…well, Dumbledore was kind to him and let him attend Hogwarts. Remus finds it hard to forget anyone who was kind to him.”

Dolores glanced at him briefly. “But he was lying to me from the minute he met me.”

“You know _why_.”

“Yes. But I was kind enough to both let him live in the house and pay him wages for teaching Harry, and how did he respond? With lies and whimpers. He didn’t even have the courage to face me for two days. And if he finds it hard to forget kind people, he might tell Dumbledore secrets about Harry and be convinced he was doing the right thing.”

Sirius only tightened his mouth and stomped away from her once they were outside again. Dolores rolled her eyes at his back and tilted her head back to breathe in the clean air outside the Ministry. Well, all right, it was fouled with the pollution that Muggles dumped everywhere in London, but it wasn’t conspiring to put Harry with abusive Muggles or take him away for the greater good.

She was reaching for Harry’s hand when she heard a sharp voice calling out Harry’s name, and a sharper one calling her own.

Although she hadn’t expected the Malfoys here, that was no reason to panic. Dolores turned calmly around, her fingers firmly wound into Harry’s. If someone tried to snatch him and Apparate away, they would have to take both of them along. And she had been training in defensive magic at the same time she was training Harry in it.

“Harry!” Draco Malfoy skidded to a halt in front of them, breathless. “I heard that the inquiry about Dumbledore was today! What did they do? Are you still going to come to Hogwarts? Do you think Dumbledore is going to try and take control of you?”

“That is enough, Draco.” Lucius’s face was pinched as he looked at all of them. Pinched was a functional expression, Dolores thought, hiding his fear. “That is an impolite and _impolitic_ question to ask in public.”

“But I want to ask it.” Draco glared at his father and turned back to Harry. “What did they say? Are you going to come to Hogwarts?”

“I’ll come to Hogwarts if Dumbledore can behave himself.” Harry’s voice was earnest, but his eyes were on Lucius rather than Draco. _Clever little sneak,_ Dolores thought, and her last suspicions that Harry might not be put into Slytherin went dashing away. “That’s what he has to do. Agree to visits from the Board of Governors, and to show them the contracts he has with the professors so they can make sure he’s not hiring someone like Snape. And he has to take Veritaserum. And he has to only communicate with Miss Dolores, not me, and always have three adults with him when he’s talking with me, and never use Legilimency on a student again.”

“Dumbledore was using Legilimency on _students_?”

The Malfoys asked the question in identical horrified tones of voice, which made Dolores want to chuckle. She supposed they were more like each other than she had known. In truth, she had more often compared Draco to Narcissa in her mind. “Yes, he was. And ordering Professor Snape to do the same thing.”

“Severus is loyal to our house,” Lucius said absently, probably meaning Slytherin instead of the Malfoy family. “That was not a concern. But the Headmaster…”

Dolores didn’t sigh, but she wanted to. Lucius Malfoy had been a master of political maneuvering for decades. He _ought_ to consider anyone in the school who could use Legilimency, and would use it indiscriminately, to be a threat. Just because they might not threaten his family right now didn’t mean the tolerance of prying into students’ minds wouldn’t someday.

But she had come to accept that the adulation of Lucius Malfoy as a political mastermind was misplaced anyway. So.

“Is Professor Snape still going to teach Potions? I heard he was going away.” Draco glanced back and forth between her and Harry as if not knowing who would be more likely to answer the question.

“He is no longer teaching Potions. He found out Dumbledore intended to use him as a scapegoat before the Wizengamot, and left.” Dolores saw no need to mention the bargain she and Snape had made. Snape could do that later himself, if he really did feel loyalty to Lucius and Lucius’s son. “I assume someone else will be chosen as the new Head of Slytherin House.”

“But you’ll be in Slytherin with me,” Draco said, sounding disappointed that he wouldn’t get to associate with an unpleasant, mind-reading professor, and that Harry’s company barely made up for it.

Harry rolled his eyes and snorted. “I don’t know that, Draco. I’ve never met the Sorting Hat.”

“Where _else_ could you be?” Lucius asked, and didn’t sound as if he meant it as a compliment.

Harry smiled at him. “When you put it that way, Mr. Malfoy, then I’m glad to defer to your expert opinion.”

Lucius gave Harry a narrow-eyed look. Dolores let her hand rest on top of Harry’s head for a moment, and smiled. _He will be sorry that he did not harness his wagon to this rising political star._

“Yes, indeed,” Lucius finally settled for saying, which could have meant anything at all, and took Draco’s hand. “Come, Draco.”

“I hope Dumbledore behaves!” Draco called over his shoulder as his father dragged him off. Harry snorted again.

“He’s very different from the boy you first met, isn’t he?”

Sirius said it, but Harry paused and probed the question with his expression as if searching for traps—as if it was one _Dolores_ had set him—before he nodded. “Yes. And I think that’s probably a good thing.”

“ _Probably_? It’d be great if you were in Gryffindor, pup, _and_ if you could get Malfoy away from his father, too…”

Dolores let Sirius talk all the way back home. He needed to, it was a release of tension for him, and Harry seemed content to listen.

But she did wonder whether Dumbledore would behave. And if Sirius would be disappointed if Dumbledore did and Harry did go to Hogwarts, and was Sorted into Slytherin.


	33. Wider Horizons

“Miss Dolores, I wanted to ask you something.”

Dolores put the Potter account ledger aside and focused her attention on Harry. They’d had a lesson with the ledgers that morning, combining maths with information about the properties that Harry would have to manage someday. She didn’t think Harry had come back because he was panting after another one. “What is it, Harry?”

“I want someone else to teach me lessons besides you and Remus. Would that be all right?”

“What subjects do you want to learn?”

Harry blinked as if he’d staggered up against a wall he hadn’t expected and bruised his nose. Dolores kept her eyes patiently on his even as she felt her lips twitch. Harry couldn’t always predict her the way she could him.

“You’d let me learn?”

“You’re asking. It must be important if you’re asking the question. I know that you don’t ask for toys and unimportant favors the way most children do all the time.”

Harry straightened his shoulders and looked around the brightly-lit dining room he and Dolores had used for their class about the ledgers that morning, as if he was seeing the shadows of other lessons. Dolores watched him with her chin in her hand. Yes, Harry was going to be someone remarkable, and it would be a pleasure to watch as he grew.

Harry switched his attention back to her. “History and politics are good. And maths. But I want to learn more about potions.”

Dolores cocked her head. “I don’t think Snape would consent to teach you.” Snape was on the verge of locating a property for the shop that he wanted, and Dolores was already dickering with some of the current owners he’d identified. The chaos of moving out—not to mention the chaos of the party Sirius would probably throw when he learned Snape was gone—wouldn’t be conducive to lessons for Harry.

“Oh, no, not _him_. Someone who learned Potions at the Ministry and who’s young and has some enthusiasm about teaching.”

Dolores muffled a snort. It seemed that Harry had picked up on Sirius’s and Remus’s distaste for Snape, although at least he didn’t look inclined to prank him. “Did you have someone in mind?”

“How could you tell?”

“Your list of adjectives was overly specific.” Dolores leaned back with one hand draped over the arm of the chair, and watched Harry relax in response. She sometimes tested his instincts and observations of people this way, seeing if he could read her and others trying to keep up a blank face. “So, who is it?”

Harry hesitated once, then said, “Sirius took me to the Ministry a few weeks ago? When you wanted me to see how the Department of Magical Law Enforcement works?”

Dolores nodded, curious. Harry had explained some of the exciting things he’d learned about on that day to her, but he hadn’t mentioned either meeting a teacher or hearing about someone who would make a good one.

“There’s an Auror. Her name is Nymphadora Tonks.” Harry stared right into her eyes now. “She’s a trainee, and they’ve mostly got her brewing healing potions right now. She said that she never learned Potions well under Snape at Hogwarts, and she had to teach herself to get her Potions NEWT. She likes it more than she expected.”

“What are her other recommendations?”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t imagine that you would want to be tutored by an Auror you’ve just met, Harry, unless there was something else special about her. Is she related to Ernest or another ally of ours?”

“Yes.” Harry let out an explosive little breath, while Dolores nodded. “She’s related to Sirius. Her mother is his cousin Andromeda Black. Her family disowned her for marrying a Muggleborn.” Harry’s eyes sparkled with something only a fool would have mistaken for happiness. “Isn’t that the _stupidest_ thing you’ve ever heard?”

“I’ve heard some things that rival it. Mostly out of Albus Dumbledore’s mouth.”

Harry ducked his head as if afraid of showing his smile, and then looked up and nodded. “Yes. Well, I want to be tutored by her. She’s a Metamorphmagus, too. It’s so _brilliant_ to watch her hair change colors and her nose change into a pig’s snout!”

Dolores smiled herself, but she made a little note in her mind to check out Tonks’s qualifications and make sure that she hadn’t been in contact with Dumbledore. It seemed too much of a coincidence that someone young, self-taught, and so appealing to Harry had appeared out of nowhere and offered to teach him. Especially since Sirius hadn’t said anything about meeting her at the Ministry.

“We’ll see. I’ll want to meet Miss Tonks and have Professor Snape evaluate her skill.”

“Oh, but you can’t! She said that Professor Snape makes her so nervous that she messes up her potions. The ones she taught herself are a lot better than the ones she made in Hogwarts.”

Dolores considered that. It could easily be true. She knew that more than one family had spoken disparagingly of Professor Snape’s skill, including Arthur Weasley in the tentative correspondence they’d set up.

For a moment, she wondered if it would be so bad to let an Auror ruled by Dumbledore into the house, since she let Harry play with Ron Weasley and she was writing to his parents. But then she shook her head. Communicating by letter or permitting Harry to lead the Weasley boy around by the nose was different from letting someone into their house to _teach_ Harry. He already respected his teachers more than he should, which was one reason he’d agreed to hide Remus’s secret for so long.

“I’ll want to evaluate her myself, then. I’ll send her an owl and invite her over for tea next week.”

“Thank you, Miss Dolores.” Harry beamed at her and touched her side for a second, then bumped away and up the stairs. Dolores watched him go.

It would be like Dumbledore to slip someone into their confidence if he couldn’t contact Harry himself. And while it would be a massive coincidence for him to have a Potions instructor ready just when Harry wanted to learn Potions, the girl herself could have planted the idea in Harry’s head. All it would have taken was a few minutes of conversation and guile.

Dolores pursed her lips. Well, she would have to see what she thought when Tonks arrived next week.

*

“Whoops!”

As it turned out, the first thing Dolores thought was _clumsy_.

Nymphadora Tonks was still holding out her hand from her Floo entrance and reassuring Dolores that she liked to be called by her last name and not her first when the poker beside the fireplace tumbled and hit her in the leg. Flailing, Tonks grabbed hold of the mantel and managed to pull it down, sending several delicate porcelain keepsakes that the Potter house-elves had found in storage rooms flying. Dolores used her wand to keep them from smashing, and looked down at the young Auror lying on the hearth in front of her.

 _If she’s a spy, then in a way, she’s a_ very _good one._

“And you’re an Auror?” she asked, unable to keep her voice even.

“Still a trainee, right now,” Tonks said earnestly, digging her elbows into the hearth and hauling herself upright. She seemed to stumble again, over soot and air as far as Dolores could tell, but this time she at least grabbed hold of the stones of the fireplace, which wouldn’t shift. She beamed at Dolores. “But I’m going to be amazing someday!”

 _If the Ministry doesn’t break to pieces around you first,_ Dolores thought, and subdued her headshake. “Come with me, would you? The house-elves have tea laid out for us in the dining room.”

Tonks trotted after her, and gasped, probably because the dining room was an immense place of arched wooden ceilings and windows that would have been at home in a fortress. Her hair changed from its relatively plain blonde-streaked brown to a clashing combination of purple and pink Dolores winced away from. “Wow! It’s _brill_!”

 _Indeed,_ Dolores thought, and gestured for Tonks to sit down on the side of the table opposite from her. She approvingly noted that in the time it had taken her to welcome Tonks and walk her in, the house-elves had Transfigured the delicate china plates and cups to replicas of shining stone. House-elves had their own opinions about people who went around breaking the valuables they were supposed to safeguard. “This is Harry’s ancestral home. It is a little grand, but we don’t always use the dining room to entertain.”

“Am I such a special guest?”

Now Tonks was subjecting Dolores to that suspicious stare that most Aurors seemed to learn sooner or later. Dolores tilted her head. “Of course you are. I’m considering you for a candidate to become Harry’s Potions instructor. I keep a close watch on his teachers. One lives in this house, you know.”

“I don’t want to,” Tonks said at once. “I have a flat in Muggle London that’s good enough for me.”

“I wasn’t proposing that you would. Only to let you know how seriously I take this.”

Tonks hesitated for a minute. Dolores waited, sipping at her own tea. Tonks had tasted hers and put it back with a faint grimace that argued she at least wasn’t going to drink more than a guest should.

“Harry’s a great kid,” Tonks finally said. “He’s not what I expected from someone trained to be political.”

 _I wonder who told her that he was. Dumbledore? Her mother?_ Dolores even wondered for a moment about Narcissa Malfoy, but dismissed the thought. If Tonks was a half-blood, it was unlikely that Narcissa would ever have associated with her. “What did you expect?”

“Someone cold and haughty. Who acts like a pure-blood and despises my mother for what she did.”

“Harry’s mother was Muggleborn. Of course he would be interested in someone else who has that experience of the same heritage, but growing up in the wizarding world,” said Dolores quietly. “And he spoke well of you. I don’t think that he’s looking forward to Hogwarts.”

“He _should_ be!” Tonks’s hair turned all pink, and she waved a hand around as if trying to catch a stubborn fly. “Hogwarts is great!”

“But he’s had conflicts with Hogwarts’s Headmaster.” Dolores picked up the jar of marmalade, watching Tonks closely. She thought she had the woman’s measure, and she wouldn’t be a good liar. There ought to be _some_ sign of guilt if she was playing a part at Dumbledore’s request.

There was nothing, though. Dolores didn’t see a crinkled nose or twitching eyelid or darting gaze. Tonks only shrugged. “Dumbledore was distant enough from most of us. He was only interfering with Harry’s life because of who Harry is, right?”

“ _Only_.”

“Oh. Okay.” Tonks munched her lip for a minute. She at least was eating the scones. Dolores wondered idly how the house-elves could possibly have made the tea offensive. “That changes things a little.”

“It does.” Dolores sat up as straight as she could. “I would like to see the way you brew, to judge your effectiveness as a teacher.”

“How is watching me brew going to tell you _that_?”

“I am not a poor brewer,” Dolores said. “I would have taught Harry myself, but I am not at the expert level that I want him to learn from. And the potions that I make well are rather limited in application.” With luck, Harry would never need to know how to brew the mild calming and compulsion potions that Dolores had used to make her superiors spill gossip in her presence. People would stumble over themselves to tell him things because of his name.

“I’m not an expert, either,” Tonks said, and her hair changed to brown, while she looked around as if she wanted to bolt from the room.

“Then are you the best choice to teach Harry?”

Tonks sighed, and calmed down enough to dunk a scone in the tea and eat it without apparently noticing what she’d put it in. “I don’t know. I can only think of one thing I could do for him that Professor Snape definitely couldn’t. And probably most of the Aurors who teach me couldn’t, either.”

“What is that?”

Tonks looked up. “Be his friend,” she said simply. “I didn’t know until Sirius came to get him, after we’d spent about half an hour talking, that he was Sirius’s godson. I didn’t even know he was _Harry Potter._ He wasn’t showing me his scar. He just wants a friend.”

“He does have them,” Dolores murmured, thinking of Draco and the Greengrass girls, Ron Weasley and even Sirius.

“Well, maybe an older sister, then.” Tonks’s hair changed again to pink, and she flushed a little. “I know that Sirius is more of an older brother than a godfather, I can see _that_ , but there are some things that I think I could show him better.”

 _And you are more cheerful than Sirius,_ Dolores thought. _And more capable of understanding when to stop finding things hilarious._ Sirius’s emotions still changed frequently, suddenly, from brooding melancholy to the kind of wild laughter that she had seen Harry watch with wide eyes. “Should I trust you?”

“Well, you said that you were going to evaluate my brewing before—”

“Not that,” Dolores said. “I want to know why you suddenly appeared. It seems likely to me that you might be a recruit to Dumbledore’s side of things. I know that you were either a Gryffindor or a Hufflepuff—”

“Hufflepuff,” snapped Tonks, and her hair turned to flat black. “Why would you—I know Dumbledore was ordered to stay away from Harry. Why would you think that I would _help_ him to get access? That’s insulting!”

“You’re a young woman related to someone who used to be part of Dumbledore’s Order of the Phoenix,” Dolores said, counting the truths off on her fingers. “You have a talent for changing your appearance that’s rare even among the Blacks. You have a Muggleborn father. You won’t be sympathetic to pure-blood politics, and you even expressed disgust at the thought that Harry had been tutored in them. You come out of nowhere exactly when Dumbledore finds himself barred from visits and letters. Why _wouldn’t_ you be his spy?”

Tonks stared at her with her lips parted. Then she flung her head back and laughed.

Dolores waited, her hands clutching either side of the teacup. Tonks finally broke off and choked on her tears, wiping them away. Then she conjured a handkerchief and blew her nose messily. Dolores let her lip curl a little.

Tonks didn’t appear to notice. She simply shook her head. “I’m _not_ part of the Order of the Phoenix, Madam Umbridge,” she said. “And I don’t think that Dumbledore is looking to recruit me any time soon. Sure, I’m related to Sirius. That’s not a recommendation right now. I’m a half-blood, but there are lots of those in the wizarding world.” She looked at Dolores pointedly.

Dolores nodded.

“I was just surprised that Harry Potter was deigning to _talk_ to me,” Tonks said. “Yeah, I don’t like the traditional pure-blood families much, not after the Blacks exiled my mum. But that’s a long way from helping Dumbledore manipulate a little boy.”

Dolores began to relax. Now she thought she understood. Perhaps because Harry was still small for his age or because his fringe had hidden his scar at first, he had struck Tonks as a child.

“My appearance really _was_ a coincidence.” Tonks cocked her head. “And the Aurors were interested in me for my Metamorphmagus magic, so I suppose I can’t reassure you that Dumbledore never would be. But I think he’s mostly interested in people who worship him. You know, so they’ll do things like manipulate a little boy without question.”

The disgust in her voice was real, Dolores judged. She nodded. “Then you will not be interested in attending Harry’s politics lessons?”

It was a test, to watch how much Tonks’s mouth twisted. She shook her head. “I reckon you’re right, and he needs it. He _is_ important. But I like the boy I met that day, the boy who asked me all sorts of questions about myself and what it was like to grow up in the wizarding world with one Muggleborn parent.” She leaned forwards, her eyes intent. “I won’t help someone hurt him. I want to help him. But until you owled me, I couldn’t think of any way. I didn’t think he would be _impressed_ by the skill I do have with Potions.”

“I suppose I have to see it before I know if I will be, either,” Dolores said, and stood. Her heartbeat had calmed. Perhaps she ought to trust Harry’s instincts, she thought. He would have distrusted a sycophant. He had disliked Dumbledore from the moment he laid eyes on him. Let him spot and choose his own champions.

_I taught him. I should have faith that he would be able to defend himself with words._

“Then let me show you.”

Tonks looked like a confident and collected young woman as she stood up. At least, until her sleeve caught hold of the cup and made it fly towards the wall. Dolores sighed and flicked her wand, catching it and lowering it again.

Tonks flushed. “Sorry.”

“Let me show you to the brewing lab,” Dolores said, and led her there, shaking her head as they went. She would have the house-elves replace some of the breakable vials and other equipment.

But she thought she might have found an ally for Harry at least as good as Sirius.


	34. Unforeseen Consquences

“Then that is the final price,” Dolores said, and stepped back from her first handshake with the owner to look again around the space that would become Snape’s shop in Diagon Alley.

It had used to be an apothecary at one point, but the current owner had used it as a junk shop, a Light version of Borgin and Burke’s. The shelves still stood against the walls, but dust and half-broken toys and mostly-disenchanted artifacts buried them. The current aisles were narrow and barely squeezed between the shelves. Dolores felt her lips twitch as she realized that the place the shop most reminded her of was the second bedroom in the Muggles’ house that Harry had told her about. Perhaps a fat Muggle cousin hadn’t broken these objects, but they looked about as useless.

“It is.” The owner, a small, desperate man named Ives Pilfer, clasped his hands and bowed before her. “When does your friend want me to move out, Madam Umbridge?”

“As soon as you can.” There was no urgency to the matter, whatever Snape might think. He would probably continue to live at their house and eat their food until the place was spotless, and he wouldn’t do most of the work himself. Dolores although had planned to lend him the Potter house-elves for the cleaning, anyway.

“It might be another week.”

Dolores waved her hand. “It doesn’t matter.” She stepped back through the shelves to get a look at a bowl that resembled a Pensieve, although it had a long crack down the side that would probably have made it useless anyway. It also was made of a dark green, milky stone that resembled jade. She didn’t think most Pensieves were made with anything that color.

“That’s a fine specimen, Madam Umbridge,” Pilfer said eagerly, catching up with her and nodding to the bowl. “When it’s working, you can place water from a fountain or river or lake or any other body inside it and see what’s happening near the place the water came from.”

“Truly?” Dolores was startled. Most of the scrying she knew of—and this was undoubtedly scrying—promised sights of the future, and was actually useless without the proper magical gift. But seeing the present seemed both more useful and more likely to work.

“Truly.” Pilfer abruptly deflated as he glanced at the bowl again. “But it got dropped a year ago when I moved into the shop. I’m not sure it works now.”

“You’d certainly have to repair the crack to make water even stay in the bowl,” Dolores murmured as she examined it. “I’m not sure how it would work if you did magically seal it…”

“My father was the one who bought it,” Pilfer said, and cleared his throat nervously. “You can’t use magic on it to repair an object, he said. You’d have to take it to a human Healer.”

“Who could charge more than you could sell it for. If you even found a Healer who would agree to try the experiment in the first place.”

“That’s true.” Pilfer gave a long sigh that seemed to take up most of the air in his chest. “And all the Healers I know refuse to conduct even the smallest of experiments with Healing magic unless it’s truly needed. They wouldn’t take the time or risks that playing with this scrying bowl needs.”

Dolores considered it thoughtfully again. Surely it would take time and resources to repair, but she had both. And if she could get it working again, what a useful thing it would be. The water from the Hogwarts lake alone would be worth the price. She needed to have an independent set of eyes on the school when Harry started attending.

 _If_ he attended, and Dumbledore abided by the sanctions put on him.

She turned around. “How much do you want for it?”

*

“I don’t think you should be putting the bicorn horn so close to th—”

That was all Dolores had time to hear before an enormous cloud of pink smoke and a huge _glop_ sound came out of the potions lab she had turned over to Tonks and Harry for their lessons. Accompanying it was a stench like burned sugar. Dolores waited until most of it had cleared, and stepped around the corner.

Tonks stood in the middle of the mess with a Shield Charm glowing around her. Most of the tables were covered with what looked like heavy, shimmering green swamp water. Dolores shook her head slowly.

Then she realized there was no sign of Harry, and started to lay her hand on her wand. A sad noise stopped her.

“ _Croak_.”

Dolores turned. A small frog sat on one of the tables, originally invisible because its green skin was almost the same color as the swamp water. Its eyes bulged, and there was a tiny mark like a black lightning scar on its forehead. Dolores thought she noticed it only because she instinctively looked for it.

 _No matter what Harry becomes, that bloody scar should always identify him,_ Dolores thought as she breathed out a careful response. “You were studying the Salas Interaction?”

Tonks nodded miserably. Her hair was the dark green of the spilled potion now. “Yes. Harry was supposed to be moving the bicorn horn _away_ from the cauldron to add it _after_ the dried leemy seed pods, and then he moved it too close.”

Dolores relaxed as much as she could. It was hardly dignified or worthy of his heritage and power that Harry was a frog, but the Salas Interaction predicted animal transformation based on the combination of opposing ingredients. Bicorn horn and leemy seed pods occupied the opposite sides of a spectrum that Potions masters had discovered early in history, and inevitably turned everyone who touched the potion into frogs.

“Are you sure this is the normal effect?” she did have to add a second later. “The green coating and the smell are not what I would predict of the Salas Interaction.”

“Oh.” Tonks blinked, dropped the Shield Charm, and waved her wand, and the sugar smell disappeared. “The scent was because Harry was eating a Chocolate Frog at the time. He dropped it in the fire when the potion exploded.”

Dolores stared at the frog again. She thought he would have hung his head if frogs had enough neck to do that. “He was eating in a _Potions lab_?”

“I told him not to,” said Tonks in a meek voice.

“ _Croak_ ,” said the frog.

“Transformation is kinder than many things that could have happened to him,” said Dolores stiffly. She kept her wand still at her side. There was no enemy to brandish it at here but Harry’s own stupidity, and no danger but what _could_ have happened. She had no reason to feel so breathless. “And the slime?”

“That was my Shield Charm in close contact with it, I’m afraid.” Tonks was almost wringing her hands. “I was going to put one up around Harry, too, but we’re trained to do it to ourselves first, and I followed my instincts—”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Dolores. Her heart felt as if it was slowing down now, even though it hadn’t been pounding _too_ hard. “As long as the interaction is normal and the other effects not caused by the potion itself, he should be a human again in twenty-four hours.”

“Yes,” Tonks agreed instantly. “There’s no reason to think otherwise!”

“You can go home, I think,” Dolores said mildly, and checked her smile as Tonks almost ran out of the room. Then she shook her head, turned to Harry, and picked him up in one hand.

“I was never a frog as a result of the Salas Interaction,” she said thoughtfully, “but I had a classmate who spent some time as a pig. He said it was one of the most humiliating things he ever experienced. I would assume that you won’t eat in the potions lab again?”

The frog croaked out what sounded like a negative, but then stared at her with huge eyes. Dolores could only guess what he was trying to say. Still, she thought she knew.

“I know the Salas Interaction happened because of the ingredients,” she said calmly as she carried Harry out of the lab and snapped her fingers for a house-elf. It appeared and squeaked with terror as it stared at the green coating on the tables. “Clean this up as soon as you can,” Dolores instructed, and the elf nodded fervently.

Dolores stepped down the corridor and turned back to the frog resting on her palm. “But you most likely put the ingredients too close together in the first place because you were eating and distracted. I know you, Harry. You’re not intentionally careless. You shouldn’t be eating in the lab because of the smell, but also because it can be the indirect cause of accidents like this if not the direct cause. Do you understand now?”

Silence. Then a soft “ _Croak_.”

Dolores smiled, and went to conjure a pond for Harry to wait out his time in.

*

“I think I may be able to repair it,” the Healer said quietly. Dolores had chosen him because he was the only Healer in St. Mungo’s who hadn’t looked surprised or impressed to see her. She wanted him to focus on the problem, rather than the prestige he might get from helping Harry Potter’s guardian. “But I need the bowl to run some tests. May I have it?”

“Only if you promise to return it in no worse condition.”

The Healer’s eyes focused for a moment. He was a young man in the usual lime-green robes, although perhaps they looked better with his dark skin than they did with the paler wizards’ who usually wore them. “Of course I wouldn’t make it worse! I’ll only do what I can to repair it, and give it back to you like this or better.”

Dolores nodded. “How long will you need the bowl?”

“It shouldn’t be longer than a fortnight.”

Harry certainly wouldn’t be going to Hogwarts in a fortnight. (Harry was now a human being again and not a frog, but he was determined to master all forms of the Salas Interaction, and barely left the potions lab). “That will be acceptable. I will return for my property then, Healer Ivon.”

Ivon said nothing more than a wordless murmur that she wouldn’t get sense from anyway, so Dolores smiled and slipped out of the room. The corridor didn’t bustle with people as she passed down it, but only because it was the middle of a weekday afternoon, and more wizards got into mishaps fooling around with nameless artifacts or inadvisable spells in their own time rather than at work.

“My dear Dolores!”

She turned slowly. Striding towards her was Dumbledore, the stars on his robes twinkling as madly as his eyes. Dolores inclined her head. She could not accuse him of having planned this ambush, not when the hospital was a public place and he hadn’t appeared before now to stalk her through the corridors.

It still didn’t mean she _welcomed_ the encounter.

“Headmaster,” Dolores said, and watered all the inflection out of her voice. She would be as approachable as a statue. She clasped her hands in front of her and moved her lips in what was not a smile and wasn’t not one, either. “You wished to speak about something?”

Dumbledore stopped in front of her and beamed some more. “Oh, come now, Madam Umbridge, you needn’t pretend that neither of us have an interest in Harry.”

Dolores didn’t let her eyebrows rise, but it was a reaction that she considered. “Headmaster? Why would you have an interest in Harry? He isn’t one of your students yet, and you have been told to leave him alone.”

“I care about him as one human being about another, of course.” Dumbledore’s voice was desperately earnest. Now his eyes _were_ outshining the stars on his robes. “How can I see you pass and not wonder about that dear boy? I loved his parents so much. I miss them still. I look forward to the day that I can teach him. You cannot expect me to shut my emotions off and never care because of an unfortunate Wizengamot decision.”

Dolores smoothed out all the ways that her hands wanted to clench and clutch each other, and smiled emptily. “I was unaware that you personally taught children, Headmaster. Surely you are too busy dealing with the day-to-day duties of running the school?”

“I meant teach in a general way, my dear. Of course I won’t be interacting with Harry that much, but—”

“Of course. And never without supervision, and never without me there. I understand what you mean.”

Dumbledore paused. Dolores only looked back at him, being careful never to look him directly in the eyes. She wondered what in the world he had thought she would say. He was trying to make it sound as if he cared so much for Harry and the sanctions were a misunderstanding, presumably for any audience who might pass by as much as her. Why wouldn’t she uphold the sanctions and make it clear that she thought they were necessary?

It was as though he didn’t expect anyone to act politically against him.

Dolores managed to keep from widening her eyes, but she suddenly wanted to gasp aloud.

_Of course that’s what it is. Of course that’s exactly what he thinks._

Dumbledore had gone essentially unopposed in the Wizengamot by everyone except suspected Death Eaters and other pure-bloods who had enough money to convince some politicians to listen to them. Dolores was none of those, so it must have been a novel experience for her to challenge him and keep on doing so, not crumpling the first time he smiled at her.

“This is getting rather far afield from the subject that I meant to bring up,” said Dumbledore, and cleared his throat with a delicate cough. “You are here to get some potions for Harry?”

“I cannot disclose any part of my ward’s health to you unless you have an immediate need to know it, Headmaster. And surely any illness or accident that might necessitate him coming to St. Mungo’s would be taken care of long before he attended Hogwarts.”

Dumbledore stared at her again. Dolores gave him back the empty smile she was getting good at, and stood there.

“I am speaking to you as someone concerned about Harry’s health,” said Dumbledore, slowly and clearly, as if she might have ceased to speak English in the last few moments. “Not as the Headmaster of Hogwarts.”

“But that is the only capacity in which you may relate to him, Headmaster.”

“Not even as a concerned citizen?”

“Concerned citizens who care about nothing but Harry’s political importance usually get their news on him from the _Daily Prophet_ , I would imagine,” Dolores said. “At least, I have escaped being ambushed when I go about my daily business. Good day, Headmaster.” And she turned and began to walk down the corridor again.

The air ahead of her abruptly shimmered, and Dolores stopped. She didn’t know what spell Dumbledore had used, but she recognized the tingle on her skin as a powerful shield. She didn’t want to walk into it and have something undignified happen.

“This is unconscionable, Headmaster,” she said calmly, staring straight ahead. She didn’t want to turn around and risk Legilimency because she didn’t know where his eyes were right now. “You were told to contact me by letter if you had a need to know something about Harry. Not to hold me with shield hexes in the corridors.”

“I believe that you do not know everything about Harry, Madam Umbridge. That he is of great importance to the future of our world.”

“You are not obeying the sanctions, Headmaster Dumbledore—”

“I have reason to believe that Voldemort created Horcruxes to keep himself alive. And that the scar on Harry’s forehead may shelter a Horcrux.”

“You are not obeying the sanctions.”

“Are you _listening_ to me, woman? Harry is one of the things keeping Voldemort alive! He will return someday. Harry needs to be prepared for the future as a—”

Dolores turned her head, and this time, she didn’t fear Legilimency. Dumbledore shut up as soon as he saw the look on her face, and stared at her as if she was the snake that had been her House symbol, never trying to read her mind.

“You seem to have mistaken me for a Gryffindor, Headmaster,” Dolores whispered. “That is, as someone who cares about unspecified futures and wars against Dark Lords instead of a select few people.”

“He _has_ to be prepared! He has to die!”

“Of course that’s the way you would see him,” Dolores said, staring at him. “As someone disposable.”

“He is a Horcrux. Do you know the risk I have taken telling you this?”

“I don’t think you thought of it as a risk. You thought it would get me on your side.” Dolores shook her head. “Fall back, Dumbledore.” Her eyes were on movement behind him, not his wand. “You’ve already violated the sanctions in so many unacceptable ways that I’ll be surprised of the Wizengamot doesn’t impose more.”

“You have to—”

“Mr. Dumbledore!” Healer Ivon called from behind him. Dumbledore started and lowered his guard.

“ _Expelliarmus_!”

Healer Ivon stepped up behind Dumbledore and began to lecture him about the inadvisability of using powerful magic in the corridors of a hospital so near vulnerable patients, while Dolores stared at the wand that had flown into her hand when she cast the Disarming Charm. It seemed to be made of elder wood, and that made her wonder…

 _A matter to investigate later,_ she thought, and dropped the wand in her pocket, and listened in pleasure to one of the best passionless scoldings she’d ever heard.


	35. Shatter the Shackles

“Why are you using a different wand, Miss Dolores?”

Harry sked the question when the two of them were at dinner that night. Sirius had eaten hastily and run upstairs to be with Lupin, since it was the night of the full moon and his transformation might begin at any moment. At least Dolores knew he had drunk the Wolfsbane each time he was supposed to.

Dolores considered the thought of the Elder Wand. There seemed to be no doubt that it was what it seemed to be. She had tried casting, and her spells were exponentially more powerful. She had used her first wand to cast a spell that would detect the kind of core a wand had, and had watched the cloudy image of a thestral form, rather than the usual phoenix, dragon, or unicorn. That matched with the legends that said the core of the Elder Wand was a thestral hair.

There was also no doubt from Dumbledore’s devastated, blank stare that he had been more than sorry to lose the wand. He had opened his mouth to say something when Aurors came to escort him from St. Mungo’s, but then closed it without speaking. His eyes had remained pinned to the wand as he turned away.

“Miss Dolores?”

Dolores smiled as she glanced at Harry. It was ridiculous, if one looked at the bare facts, for her to entrust this secret to a mere child like Harry. On the other hand, she would trust him more than she would Sirius or Lupin. Or Snape, who thankfully would be moving to his new premises tomorrow.

And there was at least one thing the wand might help with, one decision Harry alone could make.

“Harry,” she said, and from the tone she used he must have known it wasn’t just in response to his question. His brow wrinkled, and he sat up and gave her his full attention. “Do you still want to attend Hogwarts?”

Harry ate a few more bites of his steak before he responded, his movements slow. Dolores waited patiently. She knew he was considering it deeply instead of giving the expected, kneejerk response.

“I think so,” Harry finally said. “I don’t know Hogwarts myself, but it _feels_ like I do, because Sirius and Remus have told me so many stories about it. I know about the Houses and the Sorting and the secret passages and the point systems and about half the professors. And I don’t know anything about Durmstrang or Beauxbatons. I mean, not in comparison.”

“Plus, you would have to use Translation charms almost constantly or else learn the language,”

“Yeah.” Harry pushed his plate aside and focused fully on her. “I know Dumbledore is a problem if he won’t obey those sanctions, but I don’t want to let him push me out of attending Hogwarts. I want to go. And I want him to either obey the rules or leave.”

Dolores smiled. “Good. Then I think I might have a way to let you attend Hogwarts and have everything you want.”

Harry looked at her with those bright green eyes that would be tricking people out of their secrets before he was much older. “How is that, though? If he came up to you in hospital and he won’t obey the sanctions—”

Dolores took out the Elder Wand and put it down on the table next to her. Harry shut up and stared narrowly at it. After a second, he made a hasty gesture with one hand, as if he had been going to grab it and then prevented himself from doing so.

“What does the wand’s magic feel like to you?” Dolores asked quietly.

“Greasy,” Harry said. “Bloody.” He hesitated. “I was going to say evil, but I don’t think it’s evil. It’s just—strong.”

Dolores nodded. “This is one of the Deathly Hallows. The Elder Wand. I took it from Dumbledore by Disarming him. And it seems to have decided that I’m its new master.” She eyed the wand. She was remembering other stories about it now, like that it would trick and betray its master to be with a new one as soon as possible. She intended to keep it locked in her room most of the time and use her old wand, but it wasn’t impossible the wand would manage to find a way out of it even there.

In that case, she would hire someone to make a replica. The only thing that mattered was Dumbledore _thinking_ she held the wand and was its master.

“And you think that if Dumbledore thinks you have it, he’ll let me go to Hogwarts?”

Dolores reached out to put her hand on Harry’s shoulder. She didn’t blame him for his skepticism. She would have felt exactly the same in his place. “Not that so much as that it will take away one of his best lines of defense and dent his confidence. I think that he’ll be considerably less likely to think he can get away with everything.”

“He still has his reputation.”

“Sullied, after his encounter with the Wizengamot. He will not _give up_ trying, I think; he is more likely to be cautious and circumspect now. And we have a powerful weapon that we can wield against him if need be.”

“I don’t want you to.”

Dolores blinked. She had anticipated a reaction more like the one she was certain Sirius would have had, if she had felt like trusting him with the secret of the Elder Wand. Joy and glee and anticipation. “Why not?”

“Because I remember all the stories you read me, of the Elder Wand turning on its master.” Harry was staring at her with his brow furrowed so fiercely that his scar looked like a cloud instead of a lightning bolt. “I don’t want that to happen _to you_. I want you to stay alive and be my—guardian.”

Dolores reached out and hooked an arm around Harry’s shoulders, tugging him close enough to lightly kiss his forehead. “You don’t have to worry about that. I know the stories, too, and I’m going to use the Elder Wand as little as possible.”

“It might still betray you in an attempt to get away,” Harry said, but he leaned into her, and his voice was lighter than before.

“Then we’ll have to make sure that no one knows I have it, unless we need it to intimidate Dumbledore.” Dolores smiled a little into his hair at the thought of being able to do that. “I doubt he’ll be eager to advertise its loss. Can you keep a secret?”

Harry pulled back and gave her such an offended look that Dolores laughed and kissed his scar again. “What’s the point of asking me that question?” Harry asked flatly. “Of course you think I can, or you wouldn’t have told me this secret in the first place.”

“My apologies, Harry.” Dolores swept his hair out of his face, and knew that she probably looked doting as she smiled down at him. On the other hand, there was nothing wrong with affection—in its place. “Of course you’re right. I just don’t want you telling Sirius and Lupin.”

Harry shook his head slowly. “I’m not going to do that again. They were wrong about you, and I think they’re wrong about some other things, too.” He paused and twirled his fork between his fingers. “Sirius was in prison for so long, and Remus is a werewolf. Do you think that can warp your perspective?”

Dolores nodded. “It could do that.”

“They just seem so suspicious of other people all the time,” Harry muttered. “They wanted to ambush Snape at dinner the other night and play pranks on him, even though he hadn’t done anything to _them_.”

Dolores sighed. She already had some confirmation that Harry was smarter than many of the adults in his life, but here was an additional piece of evidence. “I think you’re right, Harry, that their perspective is damaged. As long as they don’t try to get you to play the pranks or lie to me, you can understand that and still be friends with them.”

“They do that some of the time.” Harry waved his hand in an airy, adult gesture. “I just tell them that I’m not interested, and they back off.”

Dolores chuckled again and let Harry go, with one soft tap to the top of his head, where his hair was misbehaving as usual. “Let’s discuss some of the letters that we could write to Dumbledore to get him to back off now that I have the Elder Wand.”

Harry’s eyes brightened, and they finished up the pudding the Potter house-elves served in a very enjoyable manner.

*

A very polite owl arrived the next day. Dolores actually hadn’t ever seen a pure black eagle-owl, or one with such beautiful manners. It landed calmly next to her and didn’t beg for a scrap of her roast, but took it gracefully from her fingers and made sure she opened the letter before it flew to another perch across the room.

The letter was from Dumbledore, of course. Dolores didn’t know why she expected anything different. She ate the rest of her meal and considered the letter at length, sometimes casting spells to make sure that he’d put no charms on it and there was no invisible ink hiding any words.

 _Dear Dolores_ ,

_I know that you understand what a treasure you have acquired. And also, how dangerous that treasure can be in the wrong hands._

_We might disagree about whether yours are the wrong hands. Very well, let that disagreement rest between us. But you should consider this: you are only protected by a few wards on the Potter house, and the house-elves. Hogwarts has many more defenses, and many more house-elves. I can do things with the wand that you cannot, when you have only “known” it for a few days._

_Whose hands are really the right ones? Who can keep the wand from harming dear Harry?_

_Please let me know when you plan to return the wand. I don’t think owls are secure enough for this exchange. I will be able and happy to meet you at any place of your choosing, and give you whatever amount of money you want._

He’d signed it with all his names and titles.

Dolores snorted a little, and glanced sideways at the wand. It lay there on the table, not rolling or vibrating or doing anything else unusual that would call attention to itself. But it draw attention anyway. Dolores shook her head. “Do you want to know how much money your former master values you at?” she asked, and then she paused. “No, actually, he’s letting _me_ make that determination. I wonder if that’s how he plans to get your loyalty away from me? By making me be the one who sets the price and shows that I don’t value you enough?”

The wand lay there.

“He seems to think that I can understand I have the Elder Wand and yet _not_ know that the master needs to be defeated in combat.” Dolores moved on to the fluffy meringue that the house-elves had decided was for pudding today. Honestly, they more often decided the menu than she or Harry did, except for birthday parties. “Well, it doesn’t matter since I won’t be giving you back to him anyway, but he seriously underestimates my intelligence. It’s almost sad.”

The wand had no opinion.

“Right,” Dolores murmured, and turned to write back the blandest, politest note in the history of bland, polite notes.

_Dear Professor Dumbledore,_

_I do understand what I have, and I agree that mine are not the best hands to have it for the world, maybe. But they are the best hands for Harry. You have shown that you can’t follow the rules, and you’ll never leave Harry alone. So I am going to decline to return the wand. I hope you continue well and that you obey the rest of the sanctions so Harry can attend Hogwarts._

_Best,_  
_Dolores Umbridge._

*

Dolores sat quietly in the front row of seats that faced the Wizengamot, keeping her eyes patiently and penitently on the floor. Well, let the others think that she was patient and penitent. Dolores knew perfectly well what she really felt like, but in the middle of what was half a trial wasn't the time to show it.

_Such a boon for our side that Dumbledore never learned that lesson._

Harry raised his head next to her as the Aurors escorted Dumbledore into the room. Dolores took his hand and pressed it. Harry flashed her a fleeting smile. "I wasn't really upset," he mouthed back at her, and then continued to study the Aurors, and the Headmaster, with an intense gaze.

Dolores took his word for it. Harry knew better than to lie to her about things like that, now.

The Wizengamot settled with a great deal of mutters and blowing noses and rustling robes, and then Madam Greengrass made her way forwards to the edge of the railing to stare unsmilingly down at Dumbledore.

"You just couldn't let things rest the way they were, could you, Albus?" She shook her head. "You always were as impatient as someone half your age."

"I don't believe that we were called together to entertain random opinions, Madam Greengrass." Dumbledore could keep his head up and do haughty with the best of them, Dolores had to admit. "I _believe_ we were called here to learn whether I violated the sanctions that the Wizengamot imposed on me."

" _Whether_ ," said several voices at the same time, which at least told Dolores that the Wizengamot was as tired of Dumbledore's excuses as she was. Those members exchanged glances now.

"Of course you did, Albie boy," said Madam Greengrass, and cackled when Dumbledore gave her a stony stare. "Never did learn to like that nickname, did you? It ought to cure you of calling random students 'my boy' and 'my girl.'"

"I have already expressed my opinion on this waste of time."

"Waste of time, _really_ ," said Madam Greengrass. None of the others were challenging her, Dolores thought, so if she wasn't in charge of the investigation, at the very least they'd decided to go along with her. She turned and thumped her cane on the floor hard enough to make Harry jump. "I call Dolores Umbridge to tell what she witnessed."

Dolores started to stand, and then paused. Dumbledore was giving her the deepest look of hatred she'd ever received.

 _A look like that from someone like him is a pleasure and an honor,_ she reminded herself, and returned it coolly as she moved past him and settled into the witness's chair, which was more comfortable than she remembered it being.

"Please tell me what you witnessed, Madam Umbridge."

“This is what happened to me,” Dolores said emotionlessly. She had to be calm and cool here, but she wouldn’t let them forget that she had been the victim in this, not a mere witness to Dumbledore’s wrongdoing.

She spoke quietly of her trip to St. Mungo’s, the way Dumbledore had approached her—though not the shocking things he’d shared—and how he had blocked her passage down the corridor. How he’d drawn his wand.

The shocked murmurs kept getting louder and louder, until Dolores could think of them as shocked murmurs only for convenience’s sake; they were really shocked shouts. Dolores finished speaking and sat with her head bowed and her hands folded in front of her. She let herself shake a little, as though feeling the fear now that she had when she realized Dumbledore had blocked her way in the corridor.

A quick peek up through her eyelashes showed that Dumbledore was staring at her with his jaw set, and most of the Wizengamot looked ready to faint through their outrage. It took several thumps of Madam Greengrass’s cane to get anyone to pay real attention. She stood up then and spread her arms, as if she was going to embrace all of them.

That threat made everyone shut up. Madam Greengrass stared down at Dumbledore and spoke ten burning words. “The Wizengamot finds Albus Dumbledore guilty of disobeying the sanctions.”

“You didn’t allow me to defend my side, madam.” Dumbledore’s hands were tightly pushed against his sides, but Dolores didn’t think his robes were the things he really wanted to wring right now.

“What defense can there possibly _be_ for cornering the guardian of the boy you have an unhealthy interest in and aiming your wand at her?”

In the confrontation that followed, Dolores took a step back and ended up beside Harry again, where she ought to be. Where she belonged. She touched the back of his neck as they listened to Dumbledore and Madam Greengrass argue, but she knew what the outcome was going to be.

She might not have to have a replica of the Elder Wand made or threaten Dumbledore with using it against him after all.


	36. Victory

“Albus Dumbledore is henceforth stripped of the Headmastership of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.”

There was a part of Dolores that she thought would probably carry those words all her life. And a part of her that would always remember the frozen, incredulous look on Dumbledore’s face, as he looked about for someone to save him, or a way to cast the Imperius Curse on them, or the Elder Wand soaring towards his hand.

 _Something_.

 _Not this time, old man,_ Dolores thought, and the satisfaction pounded in her like an iron gong being struck. _This is the point where you finally have to admit that you made a mistake, and you can’t count on people you charmed to show up and bail out your arse._

“But that leaves the school without a Headmaster,” said Dumbledore suddenly, elevating his chin as if he believed that he had found his way out of this difficulty. He was shaking his head and smiling a little. “You can’t do that. Hogwarts must _always_ have a Headmaster. It’s in the Charter.”

“And there will be one,” said Madam Greengrass, thumping her cane on the floor so hard that Dolores thought the chairs in the gallery with her shook. “The Charter _also_ says that the Deputy Headmistress or Headmaster assumes the office immediately upon—”

“The _death_ of the old one,” Dumbledore interrupted. Dolores cocked her head. She thought there was something in his voice, something thick and powdery-dry. _Desperation_? “I am not dead!”

“You are dead to your office,” said Madam Greengrass, and from the way she seemed to be withholding an urge to cackle, Dolores could imagine how very much she relished saying those words. “You repeatedly violated the sanctions that this body imposed on you. Do you imagine, Albus, that _any_ member of the Hogwarts teaching body would be allowed to get away with defying us for so long?”

The scorn in those words made Dolores blink in admiration. She would like to learn how to say them like that, she thought. Not even withering, simply charring, passing over the ground of Dumbledore’s objections and leaving nothing behind.

“You do not have the authority to _command_ —”

“Yes, I do,” Madam Greengrass said. “Invested in me by the Wizengamot, not you, Albus. I see why you’re having a bit of a hard time coping with it. But I want you to know that the school will be in good hands.” She turned her head. “Minerva?”

Dolores jumped. She hadn’t realized anyone else was in the room on the level of the witness chairs. But, of course, she’d been caught up in the interplay between Dumbledore and the Wizengamot, and the fact that Harry sometimes tensed next to her and she needed to shift towards him to calm him down. It made sense that she wouldn’t have seen someone else enter.

The woman who walked towards the front looked older than Dolores remembered. Of course, she’d been at the school for decades now. She wore plain black robes other than a slight sheen of scarlet and gold around the collar.

“Is that Minerva McGonagall?” Harry asked, soft enough not to be heard even as the woman passed right in front of them.

“It is,” Dolores said, passing into teaching mode despite her shock. “Tell me what you know about her.”

“She’s Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts and Head of Gryffindor House,” Harry said at once. “She teaches Transfiguration.” He named the positions in order of their power, just as she’d taught him. Then he paused. “If she becomes Headmistress, they’ll have to find someone else to teach Transfiguration, won’t they?”

Dolores nodded, rapt as she watched McGonagall halt in front of Madam Greengrass and nod to her. She remembered the woman as sinfully loyal to Dumbledore. It was possible that she would still try to enact some of his policies even now that he was gone, and that would be a problem. Dolores wouldn’t let Harry attend Hogwarts if he was going to be ruled by Dumbledore’s proxy.

But then Dolores saw the way McGonagall averted her face a little from Dumbledore, and spoke only to the Wizengamot members who questioned her. At one point, Dumbledore leaned forwards as if he thought he could reach out and touch her sleeve even with everyone watching. McGonagall promptly moved a step further away.

Dolores nodded and listened to the words.

Madam Greengrass was asking McGonagall if she understood the ramifications of taking over the school, and that they included not having any contact with “the former Headmaster” except under supervision by the Wizengamot. McGonagall nodded. She kept her head turned away from Dumbledore when he stepped deliberately to the side, when he spoke her name softly, and when he reached out again.

At that point, the Aurors interfered, making Dolores relax.

“I don’t understand,” Harry muttered to her, and Dolores leaned down. She could always ask Ernest if she could view his memory of the conversation later. “Why does he keep _doing_ that when he has to know that he lost?”

“Do you think he knows he’s lost?”

Harry frowned and studied Dumbledore a minute. Then he said, “He doesn’t, does he? Why?”

Dolores had to smile, although she kept her own head bowed so that Dumbledore wouldn’t see it and accuse her of interfering in the trial somehow. Of course Harry wouldn’t understand why she was smiling. “I think, if you win often enough and for long enough, it can be hard to realize you aren’t anymore.”

“But that’s _stupid_.”

“What have I told you about using such poor language, Harry?”

“Sorry, Miss Dolores. I mean it’s irrational.”

Dolores shrugged as she watched the Wizengamot wrapping up the last of the trial, instructing Dumbledore as to the date that he had to move out of Hogwarts. “It’s happened for Dumbledore for years. Decades. He had people listening to him in the last war even though he never fought except through vigilante means, and it had already been thirty-five years since his defeat of Grindelwald. His reputation was never allowed to die.”

“Now?”

Dolores permitted herself a thin smile as she watched Dumbledore being escorted out of the courtroom by Aurors. “Now, I think it is suitably tarnished, if not dead.”

Dumbledore did pause in the doorway to glare at her. Dolores only raised a single eyebrow before she turned away, one hand poised over Harry’s shoulder. Harry smiled at her and walked beside her, not turning to look back himself.

 _Good_. Dolores saw no reason to let Dumbledore attempt any last-minute Legilimency on her ward.

*

“What are you going to do now that you have the most powerful wand in the world?”

Harry had said that to her before he went to sleep, dozing off in his bed almost as soon as his head touched the pillow. Dolores could understand that. Today had been a wonderful release of tension for him, ensuring that when he went to Hogwarts, he could enjoy the experience without Dumbledore plaguing him.

 _Or Snape, either,_ Dolores thought, and lifted her head to the stars. She was sitting on top of the Potter house’s short turret, which had no shelters over it except a thin, shimmering dome that would turn aside gentle rain. Dolores had cast Warming Charms over her robes before she ventured up here, because she wasn’t irrational. And the Elder Wand lay in her hand now, as she turned it over and over.

Truly, it might have been tempting if it had somehow come into her grasp before she found Harry. Then she would have wanted to carve a path to power.

But now, she had learned how much better it was when someone’s eyes weren’t fixed on her at all times, or when people saw her as an accessory to someone else powerful. Besides, the Elder Wand could not _force_ its possessor to go to war. Dumbledore had held it in peace for years.

And Dolores prided herself on having both more self-control and less of a need to prove herself than the famous Albus Dumbledore.

The wand resonated in her grasp as if dissatisfied with that. Dolores looked at it and gave the equivalent of a mental shrug.

The wand could be sulky all it liked. Dolores was still _not_ going to use it.

*

Dolores smiled as she read over the letter from McGonagall. It hadn’t arrived until more than a week after Dumbledore’s trial, and it was written cautiously. Obviously McGonagall wanted Harry at Hogwarts, but she was hardly going to scold Dolores into sending him. She made sure Dolores and Harry knew he was welcome, instead.

“I think you were right.”

Sirius stood in the dining room doorway. Lately, he had mostly avoided having meals alone with her, but Lupin was in his room after a hard full moon night and Harry was flying. Dolores laid down the letter. “Which of the many things I am right about are you referring to?”

Sirius came in and sat down at the table. One of the house-elves appeared with butter and bread for him. Sirius nodded thanks instead of saying it the way he usually did, broke off a piece of the bread, and dipped it in the melted butter. By this point, Dolores was watching closely. It wasn’t like Sirius to act like this.

Sirius swallowed and said, “You were right that Harry couldn’t go to school the way he would have under Dumbledore.”

“No.”

“And I think Minerva will be a better Headmistress anyway,” Sirius went on, almost rambling to himself. He was building up to something else, Dolores was sure, something he wanted to ask or tell. She raised her eyebrow politely and folded her arms.

Sirius sighed and said to the wall or the door more than to her, “He’s going to be Slytherin.”

“Yes.”

“I really did think there was a chance…” Sirius trailed off, and broke and dipped his bread again. “Probably not for Gryffindor—maybe that got destroyed the minute you picked him up from the Dursleys—but maybe for Ravenclaw.”

“Harry does like learning,” Dolores said, and when Sirius looked at her hopefully, had to explain something she’d thought he would have noticed by now. “But he doesn’t love learning for its own _sake_. What he reads about are methods to exploit what he already knows. He wants to know political history to learn what he should and shouldn’t do in politics. He wants to know spells so he can win a duel.”

“And he wanted Dumbledore gone so he can go to school and manipulate people.”

“He would not have held such resentment against Dumbledore if he had not abandoned him with abusive Muggles.”

Sirius dropped his eyes and sat without saying anything for long minutes. Dolores turned back to McGonagall’s letter. She would write a genuinely polite answer to it. The only thing she absolutely _insisted_ on was that McGonagall report any attempt by Dumbledore to get in contact with Harry to her immediately.

“That really is the crux of everything, isn’t it?” Sirius said softly, tapping his fingers next to his plate. A house-elf appeared, looked around, squeaked, and left again. Sirius didn’t seem to notice. “If Dumbledore hadn’t left Harry there, nothing else would have happened.”

Dolores shook her head. “I would not have encountered him. Harry would not care as much about rescuing Muggleborn children from abusive families and would probably be much more Gryffindor. Of course, it would depend on who had had the raising of him.”

Sirius braced himself and lifted his head. “That could have been me.”

“It could have been.” Dolores said nothing else. She had never interfered or inquired what Sirius was telling Harry about why he had rushed off after the Potters died. It was between them, and Harry was the one who would make his peace with it and forgive Sirius, or not.

“But it wasn’t,” Sirius finally said, and stood as though his bones hurt him. “He’ll go to Hogwarts. And he’ll change the world.”

Dolores smiled at him. “Yes, he will. For the better.” And she would find some means to deal with the Horcrux, as she had dealt with the Elder Wand. That knowledge would become a weapon for Harry, not against him.

Sirius finally smiled back. “I think you’re right,” he repeated, and left her.

*

“You’ll let me know if you left anything behind or if you want anything sent to you.”

Harry looked away from the Hogwarts Express, which he had been staring at as if hypnotized, and smiled at her. “Careful, Miss Dolores. Or someone is going to start thinking of you as _motherly_.”

Dolores narrowed her eyes, but over the last few months, as Harry prepared for Hogwarts, it had largely lost its effect. Dolores thought that was probably because Harry knew one of the enemies he couldn’t have hoped to combat on his own was gone and his school experience would be more peaceful.

 _Two enemies, actually._ Snape had moved into his new apothecary at last, and was, by all reports, terrorizing most of his customers and having a grand time of it.

“I know who you are,” Harry said softly, and Dolores snapped her gaze back to him. “I’ve always known who you are.”

“That right,” said Dolores, a little unnerved by the look in those green eyes. “Dolores Umbridge, your guardian.”

Harry tilted his head at her and stepped close enough that Dolores knew no one else would be able to hear him beyond the chatter and the shouts and the hooting of owls surrounding them. “You were the one who wanted to use me,” he murmured. “You were raising me, at one point, so that you could take power in the wizarding world and no one would ever suspect you.”

Dolores said nothing, and found she couldn’t move. But Harry wouldn’t have been _irrational_ enough to cast a spell in front of other people, where they could see and might realize he had no Trace on his wand. She knew it was simply the tension in her own muscles, the gleam in Harry’s eyes, that held her still.

“I don’t know when exactly that changed,” Harry went on, thoughtfully. “Maybe when you needed to take down Lucius Malfoy, or when Dumbledore started becoming more of a threat. But I know it changed.”

Dolores found her voice. “Do you?” Harry was not Sirius, to think that simple reassurances were sincere ones.

“Yes. Of course I do.” Harry looked up at her and smiled. The expression wasn’t a child’s, wasn’t a politician’s. Dolores had no idea who _Harry_ was, at that moment. “I know that you would have given up at some point if all you cared about was power. It was too difficult to get it. You would have found some other way. Or you would have kept me but kept crawling up in the Ministry. Sirius was there. He could have taken care of me.”

Dolores said nothing. In truth, it had been years since she thought about her old ambitions of rising in the Ministry. She suspected that she might think about them now that Harry would be at school much of the time—but achieving the position of assistant to the Minister, as she had once wished, seemed boring now. What challenges could that position offer her that raising Harry couldn’t? It wouldn’t even be as exciting to govern behind the scenes as it would be to stand behind Harry and pretend she was harmless and maternal.

Of course, that assumed Harry was going to let her keep seeming that way instead of exposing her.

“You didn’t do that.” Harry reached out and caught her hand, holding it in a grip so firm that Dolores began to believe, at last. “You kept me and you guarded me and you trained me. You weren’t always kind. But I—” Harry paused, and the steam from the Express billowed around him. Dolores waited. She knew the train would leave soon, but nothing had ever seemed less important.

“I prefer the person I am now,” Harry said at last, so softly that Dolores could barely hear him. “I want to be who I am. And you’re the one who made me that way.”

He flung his arms around Dolores and held tight. And he did add, in a whisper, “That means that I won’t let you get away with using the Elder Wand stupidly—excuse me, _irrationally—_ or doing something based on blood purity. But I don’t think you would do that anyway. You’re too smart.”

He pulled back and smiled at her. “Good-bye, Miss Dolores.”

The train whistle blew, which meant he had to leave. Dolores did nothing but bow her head and kiss him on both cheeks, and wave when he hauled his Lightened trunk onto the train and smiled again at her.

As the Express pulled away, Dolores felt her face break out into a helpless smile.

_I’m hardly the only person who’s going to bow my head to him._

*

She received a letter that night, carried by Harry’s new, magnificent snowy owl, and containing only a single word.

_Slytherin._

Dolores toasted the air with her wineglass. She had thought about pulling out her repaired scrying bowl to watch the Sorting, but she trusted Harry enough to know he would tell her the truth. It was _other_ people she would have to use that thing to watch.

Harry was off and flying now. To have played some part in raising him to the point where he could take wing…

There were certain words she could never say. That she might never be able to say.

But that she was grateful to be part of his life?

_Yes. Oh, yes._

**The End.**


End file.
